Question Planet texture level file sizes/ resolutions

[squeaky024]

Okay, I am planning to make my own system with about 5 planets and my own custom textures for them, so I'm wondering what would be a good way to find out how large my textures need to be for each planet? I'm also lacking a particular program that I need called Photoshop :facepalm: so if anyone knows a good alternative that's free it would be appreciated!

I will be asking my dad later today if he has Photoshop, so hopefully if he has it making textures would be easier. Right now the most advanced program I have on my computer for image editing is paint.net, which lacks the blending tools I need for this.

 

[orb]

I use GIMP for making textures, and it has all what I need for this. And if it doesn't, you can download plug-ins for it. I haven't used Paint.net, so I don't know if it lacks features you need, but many people have used it for making textures, so I don't think it would be so bad.

As for planetary texture sizes, here's a table:

 Level | Dimensions (px)

1 ​

|

64 x 64​

2 ​

|

128 x 128​

3 ​

|

256 x 256​

4 ​

|

512 x 256​

5 ​

|

1024 x 512​

6 ​

|

2048 x 1024​

7 ​

|

4096 x 2048​

8 ​

|

8192 x 4096​

9 ​

|

16384 x 8192​

10 ​

|

32768 x 16384​

11 ​

|

65535 x 32768​

12 ​

|

131072 x 65536​

13 ​

|

262144 x 131072​

14 ​

|

524288 x 262144​

Note, that you need to have much RAM if you want to create high level textures in one piece, e.g. level 11 and higher.

 

[squeaky024]

How much ram though? For my Earth like planet I'm just going to cut and paste from earth to create my own continents, but I am limited by my own patience to zoom in and take pictures and connect for the entire planet than to take one large picture of each major land piece

Edit: I guess I will try out GIMP, from screenshots I have seen so far it has everything I need that I could think of.
Edit: Also I have just over 2gb of RAM.

 

[orb]

How much ram though?

Multiply the horizontal by vertical dimensions and next by number of bytes per pixel (i.e. bpp/8), and you'll get the memory size for the full texture, e.g. 1.5GB (24bpp) or 2GB (32bpp) for level 10, 6GB (24bpp) or 8GB (32bpp) for level 11. (When you edit textures they are uncompressed in memory.)

So, if you have 8 GB, you can try with level 11 textures in one chunk.