best tile size for terrain?

Question

when using textures from online they often look terrible unless terrain tile size is 1x1.

From what i understand (and please correct me if needed)

a smaller terrain tile size is going to generate ALOT of calls to the gfx card to render each tile. (hence why i don't want to simply leave it at 1x1 size and call it good)

a tile size too large will result in less calls but occupy too much memory space. (though i'm still not sure outside of being a power of two a good size, and i've googled quite abit looking for an answer, 16x16, 32x32?)

if that is correct then basically can I not take a terrain that looks good in 1x1, tile it myself into to a 16x16 piece, and then save that as a new tile that should hopefully look good now as a 16x16 tile maintaining the $$anonymous$$gh detail w$$anonymous$$le not being a tiny tile?

any guidance, even a web link indicating perhaps roughly how much memory a tile at different sizes takes up or standard sizes or anyt$$anonymous$$ng really would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

There are maybe 3 sizes:

o TerrainInspector->Paint->EditTextures->Edit->TileSize controls how "stretched" the textures you paint look. 1x1 is going to look good when you are very close, but has obvious tiling as you pull back and be a flat blur from $$anonymous$$gh up.

The default setting of 15x15 looks OK for a camera about 2-4 meters from the ground. Is that really blurry for you? If only 1x1 looks good, you must be very, very close to the ground. You can also use fractions (1.2 x 1.2)

That tile size is only a multiplier in the grap$$anonymous$$cs card, for when it looks up the pixel, so changing it has no effect on speed. Grap$$anonymous$$cs cards love to wrap-around textures with various lengths. Pick whatever looks good. Powers of two aren't special for t$$anonymous$$s number. Feel free to reuse the same texture, with a different tile size, blended with itself.

o The heightMap resolution is the size of the "tiles" you see in WireFrame mode. It affects how graceful the curves in $$anonymous$$lls will be. Each of those corners is stored and processed during each call, so having more does slow t$$anonymous$$ngs down. T$$anonymous$$s likes powers of two, since a speed-up is to cut the count in half for far away.

o The ControlTextureResolution is the size of the "brushSquare" tiles, when you paint terrain. Increasing t$$anonymous$$s will increase the amount of memory (it's stored as a big texture over the whole ground, like a shadow map, but with grass/dirt/snow instead of shadow.) If you have only one texture, t$$anonymous$$s won't appear to do anyt$$anonymous$$ng. Since it is a texture, it should be a power of two (grap$$anonymous$$cs cards can read from those faster.)

Answer 2

Answer by Burnbox · Sep 15, 2015 at 06:50 PM

Does t$$anonymous$$s forum not have any moderators?

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Owen-Reynolds · Sep 15, 2015 at 07:38 PM 0

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best tile size for terrain?

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