Options for Texture Import Resolutions

General Feedback & Requests
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I’ve always had issues with bloat when it comes to using asset packs from the store. Typically artists create 4K textures for every little thing. But when making games this is almost always impractical due to the project size bloat this creates and memory issues.

It would be great if we could LOD or Cap resolutions BEFORE import. LODing via the Property Matrix inside the editor merely helps with packaged texture memory, but doesn’t help with project size or Texture Memory inside the editor.

Currently it seems the only workaround is to export every texture and either manually fix the resolutions in an external program or bulk edit them, which is always a huge faff.

Without a setting for this, it means most asset packs from the store aren’t fit for purpose, unless you use external tools to fix it. One of Unreal’s greatest strengths is that it is an ecosystem that provided solutions for almost everything, but this Texture Resolution issue isn’t one of them.

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Strange, the problem you experience actually is generated by Epic/Unreal themselves, it is they that encourage creators of assets to use larger/higher resolution textures.

I am old school, where if you apply a texture onto a door knob it has better be less than a 512x512 and a more detailed object/mesh to have better quality, but still optimised for the purpose.

Nanites is Unreals way of saying, Use Multi-Million Tri meshes and 8K streaming textures of your true realism mesh models, even if it is a door knob.

Posting texture resolution lists, does nothing for the Artist, as they may have a wide range of different door knobs in the scene at 128x128, because that is all that is needed. I’d love to offer a 512x512 for my door knob, in PNG 8 or PNG 24 formats, but Unreal doesn’t like them… That is after all the job of Mipmap generators.

When choosing my Textures and Resolutions for a pack, I strike a balance. Is the pack likely to be used as a foreground mesh that is going to be closely inspected, or a collection of distant forests.

In some other Engines, including Unreal I would provide bespoke shaders that were free to distribute, that gave additional features, like Edges, Transmission, Translucency etc, adding to the quality of the final render, as an Option. I supplied all the relevant map Textures, for the use to drag and drop in, should that extra quality be required, freeing up rendering calls, using combined maps to reduce the pack size. However, my first submission was rejected outright, quoting that I was ‘selling’ a free product under a CC licence. Despite the many confirmations provided by the creator that this was allowed under their license agreement, and the fact that shaders are Editor bound, unlike Textures and Meshes, Epic still rejected it. The very same Shaders were available for free on Epics own Marketplace. So now that flexibility of giving the quality required without bloatware, has been denied. So most creators of asset packs, err on the side that all of their goods will be scrutinised in close quarters. It is only the developers of compiled finished products that can fill their submissions with freebies.

That gives you some background on the why’s.

Oh btw, if your purchase any of our packs and want lower resolution/sized versions of the texture maps, drop us an email with confirmation of your purchase and the required reduced resolutions needed, and we are more than happy to do that work for you, free of charge.

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I do definitely think a lot of this stems from Epic’s attitude of trying to disguise any sense of optimization behind flashy new features. For sure, which is very frustrating. It feels like so much time and attention is being given to new features that just encourage really bad practises that aren’t used by many actual professionals, rather than providing much needed quality of life updates.

I can understand the ethos behind providing the highest resolutions possible, especially with Epic catering Unreal Engine to film. Sometimes you need a super high resolution doornob for a close up shot, and it makes sense to theoretically provide a resolution high enough that nobody’s use case is answered to.
But it means that the vast majority of people who are trying to use these assets to make games are left with stuff that simply isn’t optimized.

It’s why I think the option to select resolutions or LOD before import would help substantially to help fulfil everyone’s use cases without making life difficult for anyone.
Plus, sometimes you want textures for an FPS, and sometimes you want one for an RTS, and those different perspectives and distances from textures would hugely benefit from this flexibility. Kinda like how Quixel and Textures.com offer the resolution option!

That’s also a very cool way of going about making sure customers get the exact resolutions they need. Definitely going to extra mile to provide a great service!

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To me, its a simple batch command and a zip. Maybe throwing it onto my cloud storage.

Whilst I also sell lots of Ivy packs, grown on premade objects, I also offer to grow Ivy onto a purchasers models. They need only send a minimal triangulated object mesh, no textures needed and the resolution of the ivy growth (i.e. dimensions of the model for scale). I work in OBJ format, as it gives better results. I can of course, convert the Ivy meshes to FBX. The textures are all PNG, so useable in all Editors/Engines.

It beats sitting and watching for sales to arrive, when I could be productive. I often collaborate in users projects, carrying out specific portions of the scenes.