rdTexTools Manual version 1.2

Last Updated: 19th December 2023

Section 1: What does rdTexTools do?

rdTexTools is a UnrealEngine plug-in that adds tools to help make optimizing Textures quicker and easier.

1. It has menu commands to quickly change multiple textures LOD Bias – a great way to very easily change the memory usage and performance of your assets.
   
2. It has menu commands to show the combined GPU memory usage and Disk footprint of multiple textures – very useful to see the exact benefits of your optimizations.
   
3. It provides the ability to Resize textures to reduce project files and/or GPU memory usage. Note that the Unreal Engine re-sizes textures to any specified “LOD Bias” when it packages your project so if you have plenty of hard drive space and backup space it pays to keep textures at their maximum size. If you’re tight on drive space or backup space or just need to reduce the size of your project – this can be very useful.
   
4. It provides the ability to change the pixel format the textures are stored in. Changing the pixel format can give performance gains in game by reducing GPU memory usage and loading/clearing along with their smaller disk footprints.
   
5. You can Rotate and Mirror the textures and add Padding around the edges (note that this can break any existing UVs for meshes referencing the texture).
   
6. You are able to Extract individual texture channels (including alpha) to their own textures which can then be exported, used as sources for Combining Textures, or used in your materials.
   
7. You are able to extract any specific Mip in the source Texture.
   
8. You can create new textures from independent channels, easily specifying a texture and channel as source for each of the new textures channels.
   
9. You can easily replace any channel in existing textures (or cubemaps) with any source texture/channel.
   
10. You are able to create Difference Maps of different types, extremely useful comparing your optimized textures with their originals, for creating masks and/or SSS/AO/Roughness modification maps.
    
11. You can edit the textures in cubemaps (HDRI) – for example, using the DiffMap tool you can dim or brighten (or change hue) specific parts of the HDRI image (masked to brightness) – or even insert your own images into a cubemap.
    
12. You can create Noise Textures, using Perlin, Simplex, Worley, Voronoi, RandomWalk, Blobs, Blocks and Bricks.
    
13. You can create Signed Distance Fields from existing textures.
    
14. You can create materials, then run those materials over your selected textures, creating new output textures.
    
15. You can merge multiple textures together horizontally or vertically, collated by type.
    
16. You can swiftly resize textures to their LODBias or MaxTextureSize values.