importing large image, scaling down, memory footprint

Question

If i import a large image of a bullet and set it as a sprite and set the Pixels to Units to something large like 4000 in order to make the bullet MUCH MUCH smaller.

If i only use that small version of the bulet as a sprite in my game, will the FINAL BUILD still use the original LARGE image for storage in memory and actively scale it in game?

Or do i have to import the image in the size that i want it to be in order to not waste any memory?

I havent seen any clear answers to this question anywhere.

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Answer by AjayKhara · Oct 09, 2014 at 01:39 PM

Hi luniac, good question. See the thing is if you import large image and scale down, there are two things, - it is large in memory - scaling down, compromises the quality sometimes. So it is highly recommended to, Import the image in the size that you want it to be in order to not waste any memory and preserve quality.

Now, to answer your question, If you change the texture settings, Max size and Format, then your build will use the texture of the size and memory you specified in the texture settings. That will affect the Build size.

For e.g., I tested importing a image of size 4096, set it to Max size - 4096, and Format - True color in the Texture Settings, and having nothing else than that image in a scene, after building it, the size of the build was around 31 MB. Then I changes the Max size - 1024, and Format - Compressed, after building it, the size of the build was only 8 MB.

Hope that answers your question.

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luniac · Oct 09, 2014 at 02:06 PM 1

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thanks for the help

luniac · Dec 22, 2014 at 10:55 PM 0

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I'd like to comment that COMPRESSION DOESNT WORK if u set SPRITE MODE and NOT SELECT MIPMAPS.... it won't get padded and upon building no compression will be applied...

For one of my projects i had to use Raw Image UI instead of regular Image UI so i can use textures that were scaled to POT by Unity itself,

instead of having to manually set all textures to POT outside of unity in order to use them as sprites in Unity and still be able to use compression.

I frankly don't understand why the hell using sprites but not mipmapping cancel any padding to POT... mipmapping takes 33% extra memory and it wasn't worth it for my game where performance isn't an issue but memory IS!

If i'm misunderstanding something, please correct me

importing large image, scaling down, memory footprint

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