General Discussion. Is there much of a reason to use 4k texture mods over 2k?

[Nexus72]

  I have always heard that it is best to have 4k textures for objects that a player will see often, like armor and skin textures. 2k is often recommended for most everything else for the sake of performance. Is the increase in quality worth it? 2k textures are pretty good already by themselves and the jump between 2k and 4k does not seem as noticeable. 

[ReverendFelix]

Only if you're on a 4k monitor/TV... and you're machine can handle it of course. Otherwise... not really. It sounds nice, but ultimately isn't a big difference visually. Unless you have an odd habit of zooming in on things?

[27X]

If you have to ask this question at all you've never seen a decent  4/8/16K texture. There's nothing subjective about it with proper artistry.

 

If you're running the game at a resolution lower than the texture's base resolution, you will gain zero benefit from using higher definition textures.

 

This includes upvote whore screenshots.

 

 

[Gameplayer]

No not really.

 

Seriously its not worth going 4K, unless you have at least 8GB of VRAM and at least 32 Gigs of Memory on your machine.

Well most people dont have near that much of both of those, of course now that I have said that your going to get loads of replys of well I get by fine with less than that.

 

60 FPS is a bench mark for modded games.....

 

Bear that in mind....The thing is though you begin to need more memory for both the video card and your motherboard as well as faster hard drive as the file sizes increase.

 

Most people probably have 4VRAM and 8 to 12 GRam on the motherboard.

 

There are of course on modding forums people with dream machines, insane set ups with 12-24 VRAM and 64 Gigs of Memory on the motherboard plus 2 Terabyte Solid State Drives that operate at amazing speeds.

 

 

Lol,

 

Of course I forgot the needed 4K monitor...Mines only 2K and I never actually use it in 2K mode as it is because I prefer my gaming to be responsive in hectic moments.

 

For the most part most people only have monitors that support 1K anyways.

Speaking of which, I have seen a lot of the gaming industries stuff in 1K and 2K resolutions and there is mostly no reason visually to go up to 2K beyond just bragging since the 2K versions have nearly no discernable difference.  I suppose if you have mods that are more visually appealing in 2K or higher that might make it worth while....Im just not sure about which ones those are, would take time to investigate.

 

I cannot say that Fallout 4 or Skyrim SE are worth going to 2K mode, played a bit in both was not impressed, but I believe its likely that there are texture packs made by fans that would be worth while....Just not sure about which ones....Plenty of claims out there have left me unimpressed.

[Cloud_1]

There is a general misconception on 2k vs 4k textures and monitor resolutions. The short answer is they are not even relevant to each other, here is a bit of a longer read on this, and while 4k textures do take up more VRAM, someone with a 8GB card should be ok.

V/R

Cloud_1

 

A 4K texture, does not require a 4K monitor.

In short, the graphics pipeline for getting "pretty pictures" on a screen is, with some hand-waving to simplify things:

• You have a 3D model, that looks like a thing - e.g. "a tree"

• You have a texture, which is just a 2D image of colors

• The texture is mapped to the model, such that each point on the surface of the 3D model (split into triangles), has a co-ordinate on the texture. i.e. points to a specific pixel on the texture. It's like mathematically wrapping a candy-bar wrapper around the chocolate inside.

• When you view this in game, Maths™ is used, which maps each point on the 3D model, to a pixel on your screen.

• As each point on the 3D model, is already mapped to a pixel in the texture. You can now set the color of that pixel on your monitor - to the color from the texture.

Note, the obvious things now:

• There are infinite points on a 3D model (look at your hand, find two points - you can keep finding a "half-way" point mathematically, infinite times)

• There are a limited number of pixels in the texture map. It has a width and height, and there is clearly no such thing as half-way between two pixels - it's either pixel 1, or pixel 2.

Therefore, to map each point on the model to a pixel in the texture, means some points will share a pixel. In game, when you zoom too far in - this means you either get pixelated looking images, or if they use any kind of filtering (*all modern games do), you'll get a nice big blurry spot.

A 4K texture just has more pixels to sample from. So more points on the model will have their own unique pixel. That is, you could get much closer to it - and you will still see details.

The resolution of your monitor only matters after this point. The model will still be rendered using the high-quality textures, even if your monitor is so bad - that you'd have to stand right next to the model to see any difference.

[TheWilloughbian]

On 10/4/2021 at 3:32 PM, Nexus72 said:

  I have always heard that it is best to have 4k textures for objects that a player will see often, like armor and skin textures. 2k is often recommended for most everything else for the sake of performance. Is the increase in quality worth it? 2k textures are pretty good already by themselves and the jump between 2k and 4k does not seem as noticeable. 

 

Depends what you're putting them on. I use a mix much like what you have described here. In general, I feel 2K is good enough for NPC clothes and such, while things like mountain textures look a little nicer with 4k when you get up close to them. In the end one's choice come down to playability vs looking pretty. If you have a machine that can handle running 4k textures and keep steady frame rate, I say why not enjoy them.

[walkingwounded]

My personal preference is to match my render resolution or go one level higher. I typically render/play at 1k, so a 1k or 2k texture is more than enough for me most times. It comes down to performance versus quality in the end. I use body and hair textures one level higher than my render size so I can zoom in/out and not get artifacts.

 

TLDR; General consensus appears to be that using texture resolutions higher than your render resolution can lower performance with little visual gain.

 

If you have performance (or Video RAM) to spare a bit more eye candy might be possible, though there are diminishing returns as you go past your render resolution. Using 16k textures on a 1k display won't yield much difference versus using 4k or even 2k textures (bigger or complex objects may look better if you know what to look for). Using 16k textures on an 4k display may look better than 4k textures, if you know what to look for.

 

Notable exceptions being if you zoom in on things (or get really close to them) or if you make high resolution still pictures (ie: photography).

Using high(er) resolution textures for bodies/hair and armor/clothing can result in a very nice visual experience since you encounter those a lot during play. Super high resolution textures for trees, plants and 'clutter' may not be noticed much while playing.

 

There are insane textures available for rings and cutlery of all things (eg: 16k), but not something I'd likely benefit from since I rarely zoom in on objects more than the default interface allows.

 

Related info:

-a 1k texture is 1024x1024 pixels, a 2k texture (2048x20248 pixels) is 4 times larger, a 4k texture (4096x4096 pixels) is 16 times larger

-a 1k texture is 4MB in size (1024*1024*4bytes, presuming no compression, 3bytes for color and 1 byte for alpha) a 2k texture would be about 16MB

-textures get loaded more than once in vram (scaled down versions mostly; its complicated, google it)

-ideally you want all your texture data to be loaded in vram (on your video card) for best performance (vram is very fast). If you are loading a lot of high resolution textures you may exceed what your card can hold and that will impact your performance as it needs to pull texture data in from main system RAM or other locations as needed.