Pixelated textures have artifacts when compressed

So I’m creating a voxel game and I’m using 1024x1024 textures for the models, but when the texture compresses it causes artifacts in the pixels which breaks the voxel illusion. It’s not too noticeable sometimes but is very noticeable at others. Like around the eyes in this character:

Compressed:

Uncompressed:

I hear that using uncompressed textures is bad, especially if I’m going to be using them in all my textures, so I want to know if there’s another way to achieve the same result? Or maybe using uncompressed textures isn’t as bad as it sounds?

Uncompressed may be bad because you can lose out on mipmaps. You can texture your models using colors and a UV map. In that case artefacts will less likely appear. They will however cause a higher polycount as you would have to divide the mesh further.

Without MipMaps you might run into issues like other graphical straining or a huger graphical load because the graphics card keeps the full 1024x1024 texture in memory.

hi @Hybrid_Posts

Yeah the Default compression settings have a tendancy to cause artifacting. Not a problem on noisy textures but clean ones not so good. Have a play under the advanced drop down in the texture and try the lossless or low, just for the textures that cause you the most issues tho i guess.

Is there a reason you are using a 1024 texture for a model who’s head is like 10 square pixels? This whole model could be textured using like a 16 color pallete.
Using uncompressed, full sized textures is very bad. But I see no reason to be using such a texture at all.
A much more reasonable texture for this asset could safely be left uncompressed.

I was using these large images because it’s much easier to import it from blender that way, but I guess if there’s no better way then I’ll use much smaller images. Thanks for the advice :slight_smile:

With a voxel game you really have to be careful with polycount I assume so I figured using a texture file would probably be the best way. But it is still good advice.

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Update: I found a way to export perfect pixel images from blender with ease using this tutorial. So now this isn’t a problem anymore and now my file sizes will be much much smaller :slight_smile:

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