[1.15.2] General Texture Atlases/Stitching Question

[Ugdhar]

So, after seeing someone on here asking about custom shields, I thought that would be fun to mess with.

So after looking at vanilla code, designed my shield after the vanilla style with a ISTER, got my shield to render, but it was all black/no texture. After some searching, I found a comment on here by TheGreyGhost (dude you rule) mentioning his MBE21.

Looking at that, he had (commented out, but it was what I needed) an event for TextureStitchEvent.Pre which added a texture to the AtlasTexture.LOCATION_BLOCKS_TEXTURE which would appear to be a dynamically built texture atlas for, well, mostly blocks I would guess by the name. So creating that event and stitching my new shield texture to that atlas made my shield have a skin in all its glory!

 

So now, my question, is it OK to just stitch textures onto that texture atlas, or should I (not sure how, but I'd figure it out I imagine) create my own? I'm not actually *MAKING* a mod or anything, just tinkering, figuring stuff out, but I wouldn't want to get in the habit of hijacking (or advising people to) vanilla texture atlases if I can fill them up or something like that.

 

Sorry for the long winded explanation.

[DavidM]

One important purpose of having texture atlas is to avoid binding a different texture every time a different texture is rendered (binding texture is expensive on OpenGL’s rendering). Therefore, it is a good idea to stitch mod textures onto existing (vanilla) texture atlases, as you won’t need to rebind to your own texture atlas every time you want to render something.

 

In addition, modded block textures are by default stitched to the vanilla texture atlas IIRC, which wouldn’t been done if there is a “hijacking” issue of texture atlases (since texture atlas is only used in rendering, the addition of new textures to it wouldn’t cause any problem).

Edited April 8, 2020 by DavidM

[Ugdhar]

Also, random thought, is it still a thing to keep texture dimensions to powers of 2?

[DavidM]

Haven't tested whether non 2^n texture works in texture stitching, but as far as I know textures that are 2^n should both be easier to handle during mipmapping and look better after mipmapping (especially at high mipmap levels).

Edited April 8, 2020 by DavidM

[Draco18s]

Non-power-of-2 textures don't work great in Minecraft.

See this thread:

 

[Ugdhar]

3 minutes ago, DavidM said:

I haven't tested whether non 2^n texture works in Forge, but as far as I know textures that are 2^n should both be easier to handle during mipmapping and look better after mipmapping (especially at high mipmap levels).

 

4 minutes ago, Draco18s said:

Non-power-of-2 textures don't work great in Minecraft.

Cool, thanks for your input guys. Obviously I don't know a lot about graphics programming/rendering, while still not my main interest or focus, definitely useful to know at least a little for forge tinkering