Revision as of 12:34, 14 August 2014

Texture Formats

todo: technical info: dimensions, bit depth, channels, pixel/texel, format(and page for format types).

Standard Formats

In development, artists may have two sets of files: A format native to their image editor such as Photoshop's PSD, and an interim format for previewing work in a 3d application before exporting final images to a game-ready format.

• BMP
• EXR
• GIF
• HDR
• JPG
• PNG
• PSD
• TIF
• TDL
• TGA

Runtime Formats

These are texture file formats that are used at runtime (in-game).

Texture file formats come in two basic categories: those that are used at runtime (in-game), versus those that are used by artists in general but have to be converted to be used "live" in-game.

To save memory, runtime textures often use compression. However typically a few very specific compression formats are supported in hardware. This means if you use they must be uncompressed when they're loaded off the hard drive or disc and into video memory to be used in-game, which in turn increases their memory cost. Hardware-supported compression saves memory, allowing the artist to use larger or more textures.

Runtime formats also commonly have pre-created mip levels stored in them, so the game engine doesn't have to create the mips on load, which helps to reduce the time it takes to load the game level.

• DDS is a versatile format with many features and is very common in PC games.
• 3Dc and DXT and S3TC are compression methods most commonly found within the DDS format.
• BMP is uncommonly used for 3d assets due to lack of compression.
• JPG is notable for ease of use and compression.
• PNG
• TGA is rarely used in modern games
• PVR
• TPL
• VTF Valve Texture Format, used in Source Engine games.