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SparseTexture

class in UnityEngine

/

Inherits from: Texture

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Description

Class for handling Sparse Textures.

Sparse textures are textures where not the whole texture data can be present in memory at once. They are also commonly called "tiled textures" or "mega textures".

Imagine a 16384x16384 texture at 32 bits per pixel - it would take 1GB of memory. The texture is broken down into rectangular "tiles", and each tile can either be present in memory or not. You can load & unload these tiles as needed based on distance from the camera, sectors of the world that the player has to see, etc.

Otherwise, the sparse textures behave just like any other texture in shaders - they can have mipmaps, can use all texture filtering modes, etc. If you happen to read from a tile that's not present, you can get undefined result (on many GPUs the result is a black color, but that's not guaranteed).

Note that not all hardware and platforms support sparse textures, so you should check SystemInfo.supportsSparseTextures before using them. For example, on DirectX systems they require DX11.2 (Windows 8.1) and a fairly recent GPU; and on OpenGL they require ARB_sparse_texture extension support.

After creating the sparse texture, query the tile size with tileWidth & tileHeight. Tile sizes are platform and GPU dependent.

Use UpdateTile or UpdateTileRaw to make a tile resident in memory and update its color data. Use UnloadTile to unload a tile.

See Also: Sparse Textures documentation page.

Variables

isCreatedIs the sparse texture actually created? (Read Only)
tileHeightGet sparse texture tile height (Read Only).
tileWidthGet sparse texture tile width (Read Only).

Constructors

SparseTextureCreate a sparse texture.

Public Functions

UnloadTileUnload sparse texture tile.
UpdateTileUpdate sparse texture tile with color values.
UpdateTileRawUpdate sparse texture tile with raw pixel values.

Inherited members

Variables

hideFlagsShould the object be hidden, saved with the scene or modifiable by the user?
nameThe name of the object.
anisoLevelAnisotropic filtering level of the texture.
filterModeFiltering mode of the texture.
heightHeight of the texture in pixels. (Read Only)
mipMapBiasMip map bias of the texture.
widthWidth of the texture in pixels. (Read Only)
wrapModeWrap mode (Repeat or Clamp) of the texture.

Public Functions

GetInstanceIDReturns the instance id of the object.
ToStringReturns the name of the game object.
GetNativeTexturePtrRetrieve native ('hardware') pointer to a texture.

Static Functions

DestroyRemoves a gameobject, component or asset.
DestroyImmediateDestroys the object obj immediately. You are strongly recommended to use Destroy instead.
DontDestroyOnLoadMakes the object target not be destroyed automatically when loading a new scene.
FindObjectOfTypeReturns the first active loaded object of Type type.
FindObjectsOfTypeReturns a list of all active loaded objects of Type type.
InstantiateClones the object original and returns the clone.
SetGlobalAnisotropicFilteringLimitsSets Anisotropic limits.

Operators

boolDoes the object exist?
operator !=Compares if two objects refer to a different object.
operator ==Compares two object references to see if they refer to the same object.