How does Skyrim handle textures?

[Dragten]

I have got a little technical question for you folks.

How does Skyrim handles loaded textures?

 

More specifically, if I have 2 items equipped and rendering, both using same texture, will Skyrim load the Texture twice? Or just once?

If twice, will the game then load the texture PER object, or per NiTriShape, if there are several ones with same texture, withing a model?

[FiftyTifty]

From what I have gathered, it will load the texture twice. Also, it will load the same mesh twice, supposing the items are the same.

The reason for this, is that consoles don't care about draw calls, so geometry instancing has been abandoned by Bethesda, despite the huge performance boost a game like Skyrim would get, on the PC, from geometry instancing.

 

Don't know about the TriShape thingy. Haven't gone that in-depth.

[Dragten]

That is horrible. I can imagine it is one of the reasons why they merged upper and lower armor together.

[Rooker75]

There's an Elven shield retexture that's extremely high-res and has some translucent bits. It caused everybody's game to lag every time they equipped it. But if you gave it to your follower and they had it out, it wouldn't lag when you equipped your own.

[FiftyTifty]

There's an Elven shield retexture that's extremely high-res and has some translucent bits. It caused everybody's game to lag every time they equipped it. But if you gave it to your follower and they had it out, it wouldn't lag when you equipped your own.

 

Sounds like mipmaps are coming into play there.

Edited January 15, 2013 by FiftyTifty