Why does convert satellite texture, take longer than surface mask?

[RoF 241]

I've often wondered why it takes longer to convert the satellite png's to paa. than it does the surface mask? The surface mask gets finished way quicker than the satellite. :unsure:

[badluckburt 78]

My guess would be that the surface mask has less colors so it's easier to process and it gets handled in a different way. I would recommend using something other than PNG though, unless BI improved the import speed.

[RoF 241]

My guess would be that the surface mask has less colors so it's easier to process and it gets handled in a different way. I would recommend using something other than PNG though, unless BI improved the import speed.

 

Well if you look in your data\layers folder, it seems to cut your sat/ surface into .png images then converts them to .paa. It don't seem to matter what you import as (I use .bmp), it still saves them as .png's, before converting them. It just seems to take ages on the sat images for some reason...

[badluckburt 78]

Well if you look in your data\layers folder, it seems to cut your sat/ surface into .png images then converts them to .paa. It don't seem to matter what you import as (I use .bmp), it still saves them as .png's, before converting them. It just seems to take ages on the sat images for some reason...

 

Disregard my comment about the PNG format, my brain didn't have it's shot of caffeine yet. That's only for initial import into TB, not the tile generation.

 

Still, saving an image with less colours is way faster than saving one with a different colour value for each pixel. You'll see the exact same behaviour in Photoshop.

Just for fun, import the surface mask a second time as a sat layer and run the tile-generation again.

[bushlurker 46]

Absolutely correct BLB!

 

In fact, there's actually MORE processing done to the mask than the sat layer during the slicing procedure...

As the mask is tiled, the routine also analyses every pixel/colour on the mask tile, compares this to the Layers.cfg for "known" colours (and to the MapLegend.png if it encounters an "unknown" colour) and creates accompanying .rvmat files for each tile to handle the different surfaces found on each mask tile...

In contrast, the sat is pretty much just tiled up to match and dumped in the folder..

 

The increased processing time for Sat tiles is purely down to the complexity/colour count of that "real/photographic" image... Compare the filesizes of a Sat/Mask pair, bearing in mind the actual physical size and pixel count in both - should - be exactly the same.... There's the difference right there, the "big" image takes longer...

 

 

B

[RoF 241]

Doh! I didn't even think about the filesize/colours. Thank you both for the replies

[badluckburt 78]

Was in a bit of a hurry yesterday so I just liked posts but it's nice to see my ramblings confirmed :D

 

I suppose the only way to speed up processing time for the satmap would be to reduce the amount of colours in the image.