way how to reduce the size of texture files dramatically

[Avalon151]

Hello guys,

I hope that you don´t allready know this trick:

 

1. activate file endings with a program like XP anti spy

2. Take your favorite skin and convert it with a program to .jpg

3. Copy this skin to Temp textures

4. Change the file ending into .bmp

 

Now the file is a .bmp but has the size of a .jpg.

A 12MB bmp has is now only 1.5MB and you have practically no reduced quality. This trick should give you a significant performance boost, but I didn´t try any benchmarks up so far.

[4c Hajduk Veljko]

Anybody tried this yet?

[Force_Feedback]

I heard of some trick a while ago, with some DOS program, 'blight' or something, it also did something to textures, reduce the color depth or whatever.

[Kuky]

I heard of some trick a while ago, with some DOS program, 'blight' or something, it also did something to textures, reduce the color depth or whatever.

 

That would be Bright which is used to compress 32bit BMP texture into 8bit texture with minimal loss of texture quality. I've used this a lot while back when I was making skins for P-40's for IL-2 series.

 

Anyway, back on the topic... I tried this "trick" and it actually works. First I've tried to place this file into CDDS and that didn't work. It gives some "incorrect header" error which I think is because the file was saved as JPG but extension renamed to BMP so it doesn't match, but placing the texture in TempTextures does work. And I couldn't really tell if the texture looked any worse so... not a bad idea. To bad you can't replace CDDS textures as that would save lot of texture size... I was even thinking doing the same with ground textures?!

[FVMAD]

Yeah, that works. Also you can make a TarGA skin with alpha channal, rename to BMP and get a transparent craft :D

[Avalon151]

I think It could be espacially good for people like me with only 512 MB Ram because skins from the Internet in 2048*2048 have normally around 15 MB. So if you have three planes flying around with custom skins, this nedds 45 MB of additional space in your Ram and causes significant frame rate problems. With this trick the textures need only 4 MB in your cache.

 

P:S I'M SOOOOOOO HAPPY THAT IT WORKS!!!!!!! YEHAAAAAA!

[some1]

The only correct way to add textures is to create new cdds file. Cosmonaut wrote a great tutorial how to do this here: http://media5.filewind.com/g.php?filepath=2238

 

DDS files use DXTn compression algorithm which is hardware supported by GPU, so textures occupy much less RAM and GPU memory (the are decompressed on the fly in GPU before writing to frame buffer), so they use less bandwith between HDD->RAM->Graphics Card. The files also contain mipmaps which speed up rendering.

 

Converting BMP files to JPG reduces only their size on a HDD. After loading to system memory, they have to be decompressed by CPU (not GPU), and then send to graphics card in this form. So the RAM usage is almost the same as for BMP files, they are only faster loaded from HDD because they are smaller.

 

 

You can try it by yourself - place on a map 15 planes of the same type and skin, so they can be visible all at once. Load the game in windowed mode and check the memory usage in your task manager, under the tab "processes". Then install a new skin for these planes as a bmp file, restart the game and check the memory usage again. Do the same with jpg and dds files and see the difference.

 

To bad you can't replace CDDS textures as that would save lot of texture size... I was even thinking doing the same with ground textures?!

 

Bad idea ;)

[rockwelder]

Well this 'might' be usefull... I once loaded the Lomac Demo on to a ramdisk due to its smaller size....all I can tell you is there were no stutters and loading was seconds instead of minutes. If texture libraries could be shrunk - then this opens up the possibilty to do this with FC or even BS.

[rockwelder]

any more on this?

[Pilotasso]

I remenber that bright, while reducing the size of textures on HD, the textures were converted back to 32 bit on CDDS by the game.

 

On another note once VISTA is up and running decently you can forget about setting up a virtual drive as the OS will do the same automaticaly for popular applications.

[olli]

The only correct way to add textures is to create new cdds file. Cosmonaut wrote a great tutorial how to do this here: http://media5.filewind.com/g.php?filepath=2238

 

DDS files use DXTn compression algorithm which is hardware supported by GPU, so textures occupy much less RAM and GPU memory (the are decompressed on the fly in GPU before writing to frame buffer), so they use less bandwith between HDD->RAM->Graphics Card. The files also contain mipmaps which speed up rendering.

 

Converting BMP files to JPG reduces only their size on a HDD. After loading to system memory, they have to be decompressed by CPU (not GPU), and then send to graphics card in this form. So the RAM usage is almost the same as for BMP files, they are only faster loaded from HDD because they are smaller.

 

 

You can try it by yourself - place on a map 15 planes of the same type and skin, so they can be visible all at once. Load the game in windowed mode and check the memory usage in your task manager, under the tab "processes". Then install a new skin for these planes as a bmp file, restart the game and check the memory usage again. Do the same with jpg and dds files and see the difference.

 

Can u explain me how to install a F-15 Tank Skin as CDDS?

I have a very detailed Skin for the Tanks (from this this Thread), but it seems to be too big, because game freezes for a half second when i use it.

I would like to install it as CDDS, but i don't know how.

I've already read Cosmonauts Tutorial, but i think it's only for Aircraft Skins

[some1]

You can install any type of skin this way, not only aircraft skins. Just do as it is described in sections 1 to 4 of Cosmonaut's tutorial.

 

And don't forget to delete this skin from Bazar\TempTextures after everything.

[olli]

You can install any type of skin this way, not only aircraft skins. Just do as it is described in sections 1 to 4 of Cosmonaut's tutorial.

 

And don't forget to delete this skin from Bazar\TempTextures after everything.

 

Ok, i tell you how i do it:

 

I have to files: ftBody.bmp (2046x2046, 24Bit, 12.562.494 Bytes) and: TailHookInput.bmp (1024x1024, 24Bit, 3.145.782 Bytes)

So I skip step 2, go to step 3:

Here my first problem appears , I cant convert them.

I do exactly as told in the Tutorial, but its not possible to convert the textures.

See log:

TexToDDs.exe -noise <Source Tga file> <Dest dds file> <alpha decrease by miplevel>
TexToDDs.exe <InDir> <extention> <OutDir>
TexToDDs.exe -complex <InDir> <extention> <CDDS FileName>
TexToDDs.exe -dump <CDDS FileName> <OutDir>
TexToDDs.exe -single FileName format mip outfilename
TexToDDs.exe -xml <Project FileName> <CDDS FileName>
0: Load C:\CDDS-Studio\Texturen\ftBody.bmp
can't create texture C:\CDDS-Studio\Texturen\ftBody.bmp
1: Load C:\CDDS-Studio\Texturen\TailHookInput.bmp
> TAILHOOKINPUT.BMP D3DFMT_DXT1 l=Maximum
Loaded 1 from 2
C:\CDDS-Studio\Texturen\ftBody.bmp
Error Dont load 1 textures!
!!!
press any key

So i can't go on. Can someone help me with this?

(If i try to only convert the TailHookInput.bmp, everything goes fine, I get a CDDS File...)

[Alfa]

have to files: ftBody.bmp (2046x2046, 24Bit...

 

I don't know if the above "2046" bit was a typo, but all textures need to be "power of two" - meaning that in order to generate mip-maps it must be possible to continiously divide the texture size - e.g....

 

2048 x 2048 /2 -> 1024 x 1024 /2 -> 512 x 512 /2 -> 256 x 256...etc.

 

In your case:

 

2046 x 2046 /2 -> 1023 x 1023 /2 -> 511,5....

 

....not possible :)

[some1]

Probably Alfa is right.

 

Anyway, here's the already compressed file, just insert it into Bazar\World and modify your graphics.cfg accordingly.

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/21637344/F15Droptank.zip.html

[olli]

I don't know if the above "2046" bit was a typo, but all textures need to be "power of two" - meaning that in order to generate mip-maps it must be possible to continiously divide the texture size - e.g....

 

2048 x 2048 /2 -> 1024 x 1024 /2 -> 512 x 512 /2 -> 256 x 256...etc.

 

In your case:

 

2046 x 2046 /2 -> 1023 x 1023 /2 -> 511,5....

 

....not possible :)

 

No, was no typo.

Ive already tried to Resize it to 1024x1024, but didnt work...

 

Probably Alfa is right.

 

Anyway, here's the already compressed file, just insert it into Bazar\World and modify your graphics.cfg accordingly.

 

http://rapidshare.com/files/21637344/F15Droptank.zip.html

 

Thanks, but can you tell me how you were able to create the CDDS file?

Did you do it with these files?

 

*edit* Ahh, now i know, why resizing did not work!

I used a small tool by microsh**, called powertoys. It created a 32bit bmp file.

Now after resizing with photoshop, my CDDS File works great. No more freezes!

 

One last question:

Is it advisable to all install all files in Temp Texture Folder as CDDS?

I still have some *.bmp and *.tga files in my Temp Texture Folder:

(I think most of them are from walmis' f15-model

[Alfa]

No, was no typo.

Ive already tried to Resize it to 1024x1024, but didnt work...

 

Well your original 2046 x 2046 texture certainly won't :) - what happens when you build a CDDS archieve is that the program automatically tries to generate mip-maps, so if the texture dimensions are non valid ones, this process is not possible and will be aborted.

 

*edit* Ahh, now i know, why resizing did not work!

I used a small tool by microsh**, called powertoys. It created a 32bit bmp file.

Now after resizing with photoshop it works.

 

Yeah I have experienced something similar - at one point I used a 3rd party tool to extract some of the original textures to bitmap format for the purpose of re-locating them into a new-built CDDS archive, but the CDDSstudio application would not accept them(got an "unknown format" error) - as far as I could see the format was correct, but as a last resort I tried opening the textures with PSP and then just save them again......that solved the problem :) .

 

One last question:

Is it advisable to all install all files in Temp Texture Folder as CDDS?

I still have some *.bmp and *.tga files in my Temp Texture Folder:

 

Yes it is generally preferable to have the textures in CDDS archieves, but for the really small ones it may not make much of a difference - but of course it it is nice to have a neat and clean temptextures folder :) .

[olli]

Yes it is generally preferable to have the textures in CDDS archieves, but for the really small ones it may not make much of a difference - but of course it it is nice to have a neat and clean temptextures folder :) .

 

Ok, then i'll start to clean my temptextures folder :thumbup:

[Pilotasso]

Any FPS change appart from textures that no longer load?

[olli]

Any FPS change appart from textures that no longer load?

 

Sorry, I didnt measure FPS, but i think It does not change your FPS, because Texture size is only important for your RAM and VRAM.

So if RAM is full, you get small freezes (i think FRAPS would not detect them/they would not affect your avg or min fps), because CPU has to load from hard disk..