grayscale performance

  • #1, by doroboWednesday, 08. March 2017, 22:02 7 years ago
    My game is all pretty much in grayscale. My guess is that should greatly increase performance even using png format. I would like a confirmation on that. I would maybe even go for 12 direction 14 frames player if that is the case.

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  • #2, by MachtnixWednesday, 08. March 2017, 22:17 7 years ago
    I think, png doesn't know real (means smaller size, because of one channel instead of three) greyscale. I know this in tif-format only.

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  • #3, by marvelWednesday, 08. March 2017, 22:17 7 years ago
    I doubt that it will make any difference, because it all gets converted to RGB and Visionaire is not optimized for greyscale images. But that's what I don't know fore sure. Simon will know... smile

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  • #4, by SimonSWednesday, 08. March 2017, 22:46 7 years ago
    First of all:

    Performance = time needed for loading
    Memory = space needed to keep all images drawable

    You are probably talking about saving memory. It's completely irrelevant how small the image file is, it will always require width * height * 4 bytes.

    Considering file size, using only grayscale images doesn't affect compression ratios. Almost all formats scale with complexity. 

    Also I doubt you will only be using non-transparent images. That results in 2 channels. Many GPUs won't allow a format with less than 32bits per pixel, so also no way to save something here.

    PNG is built like zip, if the data repetitive it compresses best. So making the files smaller would be easier if you use a lossy format like webp. 

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  • #5, by afrlmeWednesday, 08. March 2017, 23:47 7 years ago
    As Simon said, use webp format. If you want to find out how the best method for converting to webp then check the image encoding tips under manual section of the wiki as I've provided the link to a great open-source application that I use myself along with a tutorial on how to set it up & what export settings to use.

    Quick note: webp won't use less VRAM, but the file-sizes are much smaller than png (maybe between 1/4 to 1/2 smaller) which means animations & images will load faster on old potato rigs.

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  • #6, by MachtnixThursday, 09. March 2017, 00:08 7 years ago
    I hope I can still use png in R5, because I can't work on webp with Photoshop... In Visionaire the alpha channel converted from png doesn't work correctly (means: it isn't there), so I don't like webp very much...

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  • #7, by afrlmeThursday, 09. March 2017, 03:22 7 years ago
    I hope I can still use png in R5, because I can't work on webp with Photoshop... In Visionaire the alpha channel converted from png doesn't work correctly (means: it isn't there), so I don't like webp very much...
    Probably not converting it correctly or using the correct canvas settings in photoshop or something. Webp works fine for me as long as I use lossless format. Lossy format seems to have issues in Visionaire Studio.

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  • #8, by MachtnixThursday, 09. March 2017, 04:19 7 years ago
    I hope I can still use png in R5, because I can't work on webp with Photoshop... In Visionaire the alpha channel converted from png doesn't work correctly (means: it isn't there), so I don't like webp very much...
    Probably not converting it correctly or using the correct canvas settings in photoshop or something. Webp works fine for me as long as I use lossless format. Lossy format seems to have issues in Visionaire Studio.

    I don't know the reason. I exported png with alpha from PS and they works well in Visionaire. Then I converted the pngs into webp (with XNConvert, using the same filenames), changed the links, but they didn't work. Sth. must be wrong. After all I stopped the experiments and went back to png.

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  • #9, by doroboThursday, 09. March 2017, 11:43 7 years ago
    Thanks for the answers. I'll look into wiki manuals.

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