Combining Texture Mosaics

[jack.dingler]

I don't see this in L3DT.

I'm using TSE and it supports huge textures.

Once I've rendered a huge terrain with mosaics, I neet to combine the mosaics into one texture.

Does L3DT do this? Or do I need to write a tool to combine them?

[jack.dingler]

I just read in another thread that L3DT will probably be exporting directly to Atlas.

That'll be a huge leap forward and will make my question obsolete.

[jack.dingler]

The Noob has learned a bit more. Specifically Atlas supports mosaic textures.

atlasGenerateTextureTOCFromTiles(32, "./4kmOutTilesA/Aerial_B11E14_x%d_y%d", "./aerial_B11E14.atlas", "PNG");

Now I'm wondering how long the chunking is going to take to finish from the hightmap...

[Aaron]

Hi Jack,

Sorry for the sluggish reply.

Yup, the 'atlasGenerateTextureTOCFromTiles' is currently the best way to convert large mosaic textures into atlas files. There is also a plugin on the way that will do the whole box and dice for you (heightfield, texture, light map, etc into the one atlas file.)

Otherwise, you can combine a mosaic texture using the 'operations->active map->combine mosaic' option (you have to be viewing the texture, so use 'view->show map->texture map'.) The other way is to do 'file->export active map' and un-check the 'split map into tiles' option. Whichever way you do this here, there is a strong potential for running out of RAM, as to combine a mosaic requires all the map to be loaded in RAM, and then to save the image requires a second map buffer to be allocated (at least in the current image plugin.) For large maps, this is a no-go. The Atlas converter, and the up-coming plugin, avoid this limitation because Atlas does the same sort of tiling as the mosaic system (actually, it's a bit fancier), and never holds the whole map in RAM.

Cheers,
Aaron.