Are Rectangular Textures Less Expensive?

Development Rendering
, , ,
1

Hello,

I’d like to learn from someone who knows if it’s worthwhile to crop unused space from square textures.

Is a 512 x 512 image any more expensive than a 512 x 256 image with “Pad to Square Power of Two” enabled? Or is there some behind-the-scenes magic going on that invalidates the saving of megabytes that comes from cutting a texture file in half?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers.

2

actually, square textures make more efficient usage of memory.
Additionally, they are generally better compressed (mainly when not using power of two)

This is more strongly suggested for mobile, and not much general information about it is found unless you go into the nitty and gritty techy documentation.

What I do, is where possibly combine two smaller rectangle textures when I know both will be used together in most cases. its on a per-situation thing, but it might help.

3

And there it is in the article:

“You should use square Textures whenever possible as they make more efficient use of memory.”

Thanks, Luos!