[Help] Loading textures as fast as possible

Scripting Issues
1

Hi guys,
What is the fastest method to load a texture in Panda? For what i read, I guess TXO or DDS. Is this correct?
I read it is possible to include multiple textures (jpg or png) in a dds or txo file. Where can i find an example of how to read and apply each of these textures to a card for example?

I mean something similar to a simple texture replacement :

tex = loader.loadTexture('mytexture.jpg')
card.setTexture(tex)

Thank you very much!!

2

TXO is the fastest i have seen. i didn’t test DDS tho.
you can load TXO textures just like jpg or png using the loadTexture method.
creating the TXO is a bit less convenient. you can create them on the fly and have them cached by enabling the config file option for it.
you can also create a EGG file that uses your texture, then run egg2bam with -ctex and maybe -ctexq as parameters. egg2bam will then create a TXO along with the bam file.

i once wrote a small script of mine that crawls a path and all subdirectories and creates a TXO file for every image it found on the way.

from os.path import isfile,abspath,isdir, splitext
from os import listdir
from os import system




def genTxo(filepath):
    tempfile = open("eggtxotemp.egg","w")
    tempfile.write("<Texture> info {\n\t")
    tempfile.write('"'+filepath+'"')
    tempfile.write(" <Scalar> minfilter { linear_mipmap_linear }\n}\n<Group> {\n\t<VertexPool> vpool {\n\t<Vertex> 0 {\n\t-0.5 0.5 0\n\t<UV> { 0 1 }\n\t}")
    tempfile.write("\n\t<Vertex> 1 {\n\t-0.5 -0.5 0\n\t<UV> { 0 0 }\n\t}\n\t<Vertex> 2 {\n\t0.5 -0.5 0\n\t<UV> { 1 0 }\n\t}\n\t<Vertex> 3 {\n\t0.5 0.5 0\n\t<UV> { 1 1 }")
    tempfile.write("\n\t}\n\t}\n\t<Group> info {\n\t<Polygon> {\n\t\t<RGBA> { 1 1 1 1 }\n\t\t<TRef> { info }\n\t\t<VertexRef> { 0 1 2 3 <Ref> { vpool } }\n\t}\n\t}\n}")
    tempfile.close()
    system("egg2bam -txo -ctex eggtxotemp.egg -o eggtxotemp.bam")
#genTxo("./dot.png")



def scanSubDir(path):
    print " entered dir," ,path
    files = listdir(path)
    #print files
    for entry in files:
        if isdir(path+"/"+entry):
            print "scanning subdir", path+"/"+entry
            scanSubDir(path+"/"+entry)
        elif splitext(entry)[1].lower() in [".png",".jpg",".jpeg",".tif",".tiff"]:
            print "found image",
            if splitext(entry)[0]+".txo" in files:
                print "skipping as it is present already"
            else:
                
                print "converting to txo",abspath(path+"/"+entry)
                
                genTxo(abspath(path+"/"+entry))

basepath = abspath("./")
scanSubDir(basepath)

keep in mind. TXO files are a bit like BAM. they are not neccessarily compatible across panda versions. Oh and generating them at high quality takes quite some time. :slight_smile: but, they load fast!

3

Thank you Thomas!! and thanks again for the script.

In case i want to have more than one texture in the TXO file, what do i have to do? add more tags?
And then, how can i reference the different textures when i call loadTexture()?

Thanks.