Vector Textures - Possible? Good or bad? Thread

Well, i think the title says most of it.

I was wondering if it would make sense to save textures in a vector format instead of a bitmap style format. Am i right to say that it would make sense for simple textures that need little calculating time?

Thanks for reading at all

Sounds like a cool idea, but very hard to do. I think it'd pretty much kill off the method of photosourcing textures, unless there's some method to vectorize a bitmap effectively that I don't know about. There probably is. >_>

Would work great in a cartoon-style game though.

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I'd love to use svg (real-time texture upload and good scaling) for my game, but the problem is painting them.

Well, put it this way, it can be considered a method for procedural texturing to see where to put what thanks to help with vectors, it doesn't have to be cartoony.

for realistic characters, i think a combination of both could work, too. choose a basic skin texture, and add different thinks like scars, crinkles, areas of dakrer/brighter skin, freckles and other stuff, same could apply for anything. i am asking because i wonder how one could make a better character editor than the ones in games like PES 09, Fallout 3 or Oblivion. Those are in many parts pretty limited.

BTW: vector textures would give the opportunity to freely choose texture resolution, so people with a better computer (or an extremely powerful machine, maybe in 10 years) could go for the hardcore 8192x8192 instead of 512x512. Or it would run on a very old machine by choosing 32x32

Am i right?

Edited by: SeriousMoh

Cryid is right on the resolution score - the whole point of Vector images is that they're completely independant of display resolution.

They can have a purpose though. Consider a user interface built with them? Most UIs have horrible scaling issues. A Vector image based one would not.

to make things a little clearer, i'll explain what i was thinking. i was indeed talking about character textures. if a vector texture was used, wouldn't the computer still have to convert it into a raster image upon rendering? that was the resolution i was talking about, not the display resolution. more details in a texture and a higher texture resolution would then result in more cpu time needed, but better looking results. 

anyway, i think i already havea few other approaches/ideas on how to make character editors perfect (or at least a lot better).

guess where i got the idea from.

but i think you could combine raster and vector textures. at least for a character editor. just take a basic body texture (raster) and add changes like bruises, scars, tattoos, piercings, wrinkles, whatever (based on raster images) and just save the position and shape (as vectors). that would imo increase customization options while keeping the bandwidth low.

multiplayer online game where you have complete freedom about your looks. not just sets of things you can choose from. those, too, but also infinite ways of styling, if you want them

Edited by: SeriousMoh

thats exactly what i mean, maybe i didnt say it right, sorry
information about position, scaling, shape is (something like) vector, is it not?

sorry if i got the terms mixed up

oh, didn't think of that... thanks. now that i thnk of it this is actually a lot better

guess we finished it, huh

This isn't a bad idea, but you're limited in what you can create quickly. The layers of detail on a realistic model couldn't be pulled off easily. Every scratch and stain would have to be either vectorized from an image or drawn, never mind the gradients and opacities you'd need to apply to match it to reality. That's an extra step you could skip by just using raster. That said, you could probably make something sleek and clean to pretty good effect, as has been said before.

Diffuse textures aren't eating up all that much processing power, it's moving around polys, shaders and lighting solutions.

well...

Do you mean that in a good way or a bad way? I don't really get it, sorry.

Well, the way I imagine it it shouldn't be that hard to create that a texture, if the editor is good. Maybe not create the whole body texture from scratch (in Photoshop or something), but use a skin editor (which would be part of a character editor) to set ALL kinds of things.

Starting from base skin color, setting areas of darker/lighter teint (using vectors as well), continuing to "advanced" skin features like freckles, scars, hair density, wrinkles, zits, whatever else you can think of. After that pimp out the character with tattoos, brandings, scars, piercings, whatever...

After finishing the customization ONE whole body texture would be rendered (maybe when loading a level). In network play of course only the position/scaling information would be sent. I am thinking of an editor that appeals to newcomers, but is extremely powerful in terms of possibilities as well.

BTW: What about "dynamic texture resolutions"? The closer the character is to the camera, the higher the resolution. (Maybe not only textures but models and physics as well. Of course only matters in an mmo game.)

What are diffuse textures?