Downscaling textures for a multipatch layer

High resolution textures may be very expensive to render and downscaling them can improve the interactive performance of ArcGlobe. Adjust the rendering layer properties to reduce the resolution of the images which in turn reduces the amount of memory required to render the layer.

Follow the steps below to downscale textures (images) that display on the exterior of a multipatch feature class layer.

Steps:
  1. Right-click the multipatch layer in the table of contents and click Properties.
  2. The Layer Properties dialog box appears.
  3. Click the Globe Display tab and go to the Rendering section.
    1. Slide the Material texture resolution bar left to downscale the textures for all features in this layer. This will reduce the resolution, thus improving performance, but also decreasing the visual quality.
    2. Optionally, slide the Material texture resolution bar all the way to the right to use full textures for all features in the layer at full resolution providing the best visual quality.
  4. Click OK.
TipTip:
  • Texture downscaling causes loss of data, but the global changes are not sent to the geodatabase unless you choose to keep the reduced texture resolution and export the layer to a new feature class.
  • Simply saving the document after you have moved the slider in either direction will not change the original data.

6/11/2012