Texturing for exteriors.

When texturing for exterior scenes, such as a street, is it better to have many 4K textures, or a few 8K textures, for example. In terms of balancing quality against performance.

Hi, I know this is quite general answer, but it really depends what for will the model be used.
Some applications prefer more smaller textures, other one big.
Also, it depends what are the texture quality and utilization in RC.

Depends on your use case @Key_Of_Void

Are you making a game, cinematic, or inspection model?

From what you write I think it’s one of the first two - if its for a game you want to maintain a good quality depending on the aesthetic your aiming for.

With cinematics you can be a little less worried as generally the further away from a camera the less detail required, and with all the camera tricks available a lot of it gets lost anyway with motion blur, depth of field etc.

Also if you’re using Unreal then there are helpful tool like Virtual Texturing which makes using large textures easier

If you are making an inspection model (i.e. for surveying) then higher is definitely better

It’s for a game. And we’ll be using Unreal, so the virtual texturing is perfect, thanks!