Optimizing Clothes
Learn about our Cloth Optimization features
Last updated
Learn about our Cloth Optimization features
Last updated
Durty Cloth Tool (DCT) provides a powerful Optimization feature that allows users to optimize embedded textures in cloth drawables (YDD) as well as individual textures in cloth texture variations (YTD). This feature is designed to improve performance by reducing the size of textures, ensuring proper mipmap levels, and adjusting texture resolutions to power-of-two dimensions (commonly used by game engines for better rendering efficiency).
The Optimization Options dialog pops up for each texture when the user chooses to optimize a cloth drawable or a single cloth texture. In this guide, we will go over the optimization options, explaining what each setting does and how they affect the textures.
The Optimization Options dialog, as shown in the screenshot above, provides several configurable settings for optimizing textures. Below is a detailed explanation of each section of the dialog.
The Optimize Compression section deals with compressing the texture to reduce its file size without significantly affecting its visual quality. Compression formats in GTA V and similar games can vary, so choosing the right one is essential for compatibility and performance.
Current: This field displays the current compression format used for the texture (e.g., D3DFMT_DXT1).
Change Compression Format: Enabling this checkbox allows you to change the compression format of the texture. For example, you may want to switch from a less efficient format to something like BC1/DXT1, which is widely supported and efficient.
Auto select good compression: If this option is selected, the tool will automatically choose a suitable compression format based on the texture type (e.g., textures with or without alpha channels). This can save time when you are unsure of the best format.
Select specific compression: If you want to manually choose a compression format, this dropdown provides options like:
BC1/DXT1: Compression for textures without an alpha channel.
BC3/DXT5: Compression for textures that require an alpha channel.
Compressing textures helps reduce their size, improving game performance and reducing memory usage. However, it's essential to balance compression with visual quality, as overly aggressive compression can lead to visual artifacts.
Mipmaps are lower-resolution versions of a texture that are automatically used when the texture is viewed from a distance. This improves performance by reducing the amount of detail rendered when it is not necessary.
Auto generate mipmap levels: If this option is selected, DCT will automatically generate mipmap levels for the texture. Mipmaps are essential for optimizing rendering performance, especially in open-world games like GTA V, where objects can be viewed at varying distances.
Without mipmaps, textures can appear overly detailed at a distance, causing unnecessary strain on the rendering engine. By generating mipmaps, you allow the game engine to render lower-resolution textures when the object is far away, improving performance without sacrificing visual quality.
Game engines like Rockstar's RAGE engine (used in GTA V) perform better with textures that have dimensions in powers of two (e.g., 256x256, 512x512). This option helps ensure that your textures conform to these standards.
Adjust width and height for pow2: Enabling this option allows you to adjust the texture dimensions to the nearest power of two. This is useful if your textures are not already in a power-of-two format.
Width/Height Threshold: If you enable the above option, you can set a threshold for adjusting the width and height to the nearest power of two. For example, if a texture is 513x513, it may be resized to 512x512, adhering to the optimal size for the game engine.
Textures that conform to power-of-two dimensions are handled more efficiently by game engines, resulting in smoother performance, faster loading times, and better memory usage.
This option allows you to reduce the resolution of textures, which can significantly improve performance at the cost of some visual detail. It is useful when textures are unnecessarily large for their intended use.
Downscale textures: Selecting this checkbox enables the texture downscaling feature. The texture will be resized to a lower resolution, which can save memory and improve performance in-game.
Auto downscale by half: This option automatically halves the resolution of the texture (e.g., a 1024x1024 texture would be reduced to 512x512). This is a quick and easy way to optimize textures when you want to reduce their size without manual input.
Target Width/Target Height: If you prefer more control over the resizing process, you can manually specify the desired width and height for the texture. The Current values display the original resolution of the texture for reference.
In some cases this might not be an ultimate solution, as some textures are way too big due to inefficient placement of texture parts, leaving lots of white/transparent space using up space. This can only be manually fixed. Cause of this is in most cases bad clothing ports from other games like Sims. Durty Cloth Tool will warn about this.
High-resolution textures can consume a lot of memory and processing power, especially in multiplayer environments like FiveM or alt:V, where many textures are loaded simultaneously. By downscaling textures, you can improve loading times and overall game performance, particularly on lower-end systems.
When you select a cloth drawable (YDD file) for optimization, DCT will analyze all embedded textures in that drawable. For each texture, the Optimization Options dialog will pop up, allowing you to configure the optimization settings. The process is repeated for every embedded texture.
Multiple Embedded Textures: Most drawables contain multiple embedded textures, such as diffuse maps, bump maps, and specular maps. You will need to optimize each texture individually to ensure the drawable is fully optimized.
In the case of single cloth textures from a cloth variation (YTD file), DCT will optimize the individual texture. This is useful when you want to specifically focus on optimizing a particular texture, such as a diffuse or normal map.
Single Texture Focus: This method allows you to fine-tune the compression, mipmaps, and resolution for individual textures that may not require the same optimization settings as other textures in the project.
Did you know? You can select multiple cloth textures and optimize them all at the same time by right clicking > Optimize Texture.
Here’s an example workflow for optimizing a cloth drawable (YDD) with multiple embedded textures:
Select a Cloth Drawable: Choose the cloth drawable you want to optimize from the project.
Open Optimization: Right-click the drawable and select 🪄 Optimize embedded textures from the context menu.
Optimize Each Texture: The Optimization Options dialog will appear for each embedded texture. Configure the settings for compression, mipmaps, and resolution for each texture based on the desired optimization level.
Repeat for Each Texture: Continue optimizing each texture embedded in the drawable until all textures have been optimized.
Review Results: Once the optimization process is complete, you can review the results by checking the file sizes and ensuring that the textures still appear visually acceptable in-game.
It is best practice to always check optimized clothes in game before deciding to keep an optimized clothing, as in some cases issues like artifacts or game crashes can occur.
The Cloth Optimization feature in Durty Cloth Tool offers a comprehensive solution for optimizing cloth textures, improving game performance, and reducing file sizes. By leveraging this feature, users can ensure that their textures are compressed appropriately, have proper mipmap levels, and adhere to power-of-two dimensions.
Optimizing textures is essential for ensuring that clothing resources load efficiently and perform well, particularly in multiplayer environments such as FiveM, alt:V, or RageMP.