Adaptive Multiple Texture Approach to Texture Packing for 3D Video Games

This paper presents an adaptive multiple texture approach to the problem of texture packing for 3D video games. In modern graphics hardware, texture size is typically constrained to width and height dimensions that are powers of two. To reduce the texture management overhead caused by storing individual textures, texture packing algorithms are used to pack multiple textures into a single powers-oftwo texture. Current texture packing techniques are very limiting as they are capable of packing textures only into a single texture of predefined size. This can result in significant wasted texture space due to the powers-of-two texture size restrictions. In the proposed technique, individual arbitrarily sized rectangular textures are packed into multiple textures in an adaptive manner. This approach reduces the amount of wasted texture space in a more efficient manner by adaptively determining the quantity as well as size of textures being used during the packing process. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique in packing textures in an efficient and automated fashion. This makes it well suited for improving texture management in future 3D video games, where resources are limited and a high frame rate needs to be achieved to provide a truly immersive experience