So, I’ve come across the term texture masking in regards to “keep the resolution up, and the texturememory down” and, since I want to start using quixel (which has very large textures) in combination with UE4, that sounds like a pretty good thing to know. Currently, however, I have no idea what this is referring to or how to do it. Would anyone be able to explain it to me or point me in the direction of where I can get more info on how to do it? I’d be especially grateful if someone could tell me how it is specifically done in UE4.
I don’t know how to implement it in UE4, but I believe you are referring to mipmapping.
Texture masking is utilizing a certain channel of an image to ‘mask’ out parts of the image so that you can operate only on those parts and leave the rest of it alone. This allows you to perform more complex operations on the texture (via math essentially) rather than texture memory.
Most commonly this is done with the alpha channel however this can also be done with specific RGB color values.
This video should answer your question in detail :
