More details up close
We're using 8K normal maps. That let's you have more details up close, they look great under good quality lights, and it doesn't look drawn in. Much more realistic than painted on diffuse maps. If I only have the performance budget for a single 8K texture, I'd rather it was a normal map than a diffuse map.
The changes are not "in your face" so not everybody will realize it's there, especially not at a distance on a desktop monitor.
The nice part is:
1. No real performance cost (because I was already using 8K normal maps, I just incorporated more detail)
2. All these looks also point to this package, so by updating this manually, you also update those automatically:
Epi.Kelly
Epi.Suki
Epi.Sofia
Epi.Destiny
Epi.Mona
Epi.Lisa
And the
epiCreator scene pack that uses them.
Notes
1. The first time you use a package with large textures, it takes too long to load. That gets better after the game caches them.
2. I use png, not jpeg because they both have the same runtime performance but png is higher quality. At runtime, the image data gets stored in the GPU memory in uncompressed state anyway so I haven't seen performance gains by switching from png to jpg; only storage space reduction. Models that look better up close are worth the storage space.
Non-sweat presets are also included.