Optimizing materials through texture atlases

Often referred to as a sprite sheet in the game industry, texture atlases are a great way to optimize game projects. The general concept is to have one big image that contains a collection of smaller ones. This is often used when there are smaller textures that are used frequently, in order to reduce the overhead on the graphics card being used, which has to switch between different texture memory locations. In this recipe, we’ll explore how to take advantage of this technique, how to use texture atlases within a material, and how to access the different textures contained within it.

Getting ready

To complete this recipe, you will need to have a single texture that contains multiple smaller ones inside of it. If you do not have one, you can make use of the flipbook texture from the Engine content, located within the following folder – Engine Content | Functions | Engine_MaterialFunctions02 | ExampleContent | Textures...