Quote - > Quote - I'm pretty sure you don't need a 4096x4096 pixel head texture for a 1200 pixel render, for example, even if it is a close-up. The texture resolution doesn't need to exceed the size as it will appear in the render.

Just remember  the texture is covering a 3D object. Let's say you carefully calculate that the character's head you are going to render, which is the focus of the scene, will only be 1500 pixels wide in the render. The image is a sort of 3/4 profile standard "looking off into the distance" portrait shot. How wide does your texture have to be, at minimum, before it starts looking bad?

More than 1500 pixels wide. If you're just resizing the texture, note that the 1500 pixels you're seeing on the screen isn't the entire texture, it's part of the texture, the part covering that section of the 3D object that's visible to the camera. Consider Victoria 3, or other characters where a single map covers the entire head: the texture wraps completely around the head, including the parts that aren't visible in the camera. If you reduced the texture size to 1500 pixels wide, you aren't getting a 1:1 correspondance between texture size and what's in the render, and you'll start seeing artefacts.

That's a very good point. Thanks for bringing it up.

I think you'd agree, though, that you don't need a 4kx4k pixel head texture on every character in a crowded scene. :)

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.