Choosing a Shape Size

The size of a shape image is not limited, but here is a tip to optimize the use of texture memory on your OpenGL card. Texture memory is used in chunks whose size must be a power of 2 (16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, and so on). If the height or width of an image is between two of these numbers, the higher number is used for the texture memory. So if an image is 128 x 128, the memory required is 128 x 128 pixels. If the image is 129 x 128, the memory required increases to 256 x 128 pixels.

As a guideline, you should use 128 x 128 particle shapes (or smaller) unless you know you need to use larger ones.

When you drastically scale up small particle shapes (using the Size properties), they can appear blurred with some "jaggies." Likewise, when you drastically scale down large particle shapes, they can appear too sharp, and they may speckle.

The 128 x 128 shape size is a good compromise—the particles look decent when scaled up (but not too large), and they also look decent when scaled down.