TexturePacker

In OpenGL, a texture is bound, some drawing is done, another texture is bound, more drawing is done, etc. Binding the texture is relatively expensive, so it is ideal to store many smaller images on a larger image, bind the larger texture once, then draw portions of it many times. libGDX has a TexturePacker class which is a command line application that packs many smaller images on to larger images. It stores the locations of the smaller images so they are easily referenced by name in your application using the TextureAtlas class.

TexturePacker uses multiple packing algorithms but the most important is based on the maximal rectangles algorithm. It also uses brute force, packing with numerous heuristics at various sizes and then choosing the most efficient result.

Running TexturePacker

GUIs

If you prefer to pack your textures using a GUI, you can use Texture Packer GUI. If you are using Scene2d Skins, you probably already use Skin Composer and can use its user-friendly interface to add your textures to the Skin’s atlas.

From source

The TexturePacker class is in the gdx-tools project. It can be run from source via Eclipse:

import com.badlogic.gdx.tools.texturepacker.TexturePacker;
public class MyPacker {
	public static void main (String[] args) throws Exception {
		TexturePacker.process(inputDir, outputDir, packFileName);
	}
}

If you use gradle and the TexturePacker class is not found, add gdx-tools to your build.gradle file.

You can also run texturePacker as a gradle task if you make the following updates to your gradle files. First, you will need to update your ‘main’ build.gradle:

buildscript {
  dependencies {
    // ... other dependencies trimmed ...
    classpath "com.badlogicgames.gdx:gdx-tools:$gdxVersion"
    }
}

If you want to use specific version, just replace the $gdxVersion variable with the version of your choice

// Store the parameters you want to pass the texturePacker here...
project.ext.texturePacker = [ "android/assets/input/path/", "android/assets/output/path/", "atlas_name" ]

// Import the texture packer
import com.badlogic.gdx.tools.texturepacker.TexturePacker

// Add a new task that packs the textures for you
task texturePacker {
  doLast {
    if (project.ext.has('texturePacker')) {
      logger.info "Calling TexturePacker: "+texturePacker
      TexturePacker.process(texturePacker[0], texturePacker[1], texturePacker[2])
    }
  }
}

In this way, running ./gradlew texturePacker desktop:run will perform the texture packing before the desktop:run task is started. And if the textures have not changed, then all one has to do is omit the texturePacker argument.

TexturePacker can also be run from the standalone nightly:

// OS X / Linux
java -cp runnable-texturepacker.jar com.badlogic.gdx.tools.texturepacker.TexturePacker inputDir [outputDir] [packFileName]

// WINDOWS
java -cp runnable-texturepacker.jar com.badlogic.gdx.tools.texturepacker.TexturePacker inputDir [outputDir] [packFileName]

Note that TexturePacker runs significantly faster with Java 1.7+, especially when packing hundreds of input images.

Directory structure

TexturePacker can pack all images for an application in one shot. Given a directory, it recursively scans for image files. For each directory of images TexturePacker encounters, it packs the images on to a larger texture, called a page. If the images in a directory don’t fit on the max size of a single page, multiple pages will be used.

Images in the same directory go on the same set of pages. If all images fit on a single page, no subdirectories should be used because with one page the app will only ever perform one texture bind. Otherwise, subdirectories can be used to segregate related images to minimize texture binds. Eg, an application may want to place all the “game” images in a separate directory from the “pause menu” images, since these two sets of images are drawn serially: all the game images are drawn (one bind), then the pause menu is drawn on top (another bind). If the images were in a single directory that resulted in more than one page, each page could contain a mix of game and pause menu images. This would cause multiple texture binds to render the game and pause menu instead of just one each.

Subdirectories are also useful to group images with related texture settings. Settings like runtime memory format (RGBA, RGB, etc) and filtering (nearest, linear, etc) are per texture. Images that need different per texture settings need to go on separate pages, so should be placed in separate subdirectories.

To use subdirectories for organization without TexturePacker outputting a set of pages for each subdirectory, see the combineSubdirectories setting.

To avoid subdirectory paths being used in image names in the atlas file, see the flattenPaths setting.

Configuration

Each directory may contain a “pack.json” file, which is a JSON representation of the TexturePacker.Settings class. Each subdirectory inherits all the settings from its parent directory. Any settings set in the subdirectory override those set in the parent directory.

Below is a JSON example with every available setting and the default value for each. All settings do not need to be specified, any or all may be omitted. If a setting is not specified for a directory or any parent directory, the default value is used.

{
	pot: true,
	paddingX: 2,
	paddingY: 2,
	bleed: true,
	bleedIterations: 2,
	edgePadding: true,
	duplicatePadding: false,
	rotation: false,
	minWidth: 16,
	minHeight: 16,
	maxWidth: 1024,
	maxHeight: 1024,
	square: false,
	stripWhitespaceX: false,
	stripWhitespaceY: false,
	alphaThreshold: 0,
	filterMin: Nearest,
	filterMag: Nearest,
	wrapX: ClampToEdge,
	wrapY: ClampToEdge,
	format: RGBA8888,
	alias: true,
	outputFormat: png,
	jpegQuality: 0.9,
	ignoreBlankImages: true,
	fast: false,
	debug: false,
	combineSubdirectories: false,
	flattenPaths: false,
	premultiplyAlpha: false,
	useIndexes: true,
	limitMemory: true,
	grid: false,
	scale: [ 1 ],
	scaleSuffix: [ "" ],
	scaleResampling: [ bicubic ],
	atlasExtension: .atlas,
	prettyPrint: true,
	legacyOutput: true
}

Note that this is libgdx’s “minimal” JSON format, so double quotes are optional in most cases.

Settings

Field	Description	Default
`pot`	If true, output pages will have power of two dimensions.	true
`paddingX`	The number of pixels between packed images on the x-axis.	2
`paddingY`	The number of pixels between packed images on the y-axis.	2
`bleed`	If true, RGB values for transparent pixels are set based on the RGB values of the nearest non-transparent pixels. This prevents filtering artifacts when RGB values are sampled for transparent pixels.	true
`bleedIterations`	The amount of bleed iterations that should be performed. Use greater values such as 4 or 8 if you’re having artifacts when downscaling your textures.	2
`edgePadding`	If true, half of the `paddingX` and `paddingY` will be used around the edges of the packed texture.	true
`duplicatePadding`	If true, edge pixels are copied into the padding. `paddingX/Y` should be >= 2.	false
`rotation`	If true, TexturePacker will attempt more efficient packing by rotating images 90 degrees. Applications must take special care to draw these regions properly.	false
`minWidth`	The minimum width of output pages.	16
`minHeight`	The minimum height of output pages.	16
`maxWidth`	The maximum width of output pages. 1024 is safe for all devices. Extremely old devices may have degraded performance over 512.	1024
`maxHeight`	The maximum height of output pages. 1024 is safe for all devices. Extremely old devices may have degraded performance over 512.	1024
`square`	If true, output pages are forced to have the same width and height.	false
`stripWhitespaceX`	If true, blank pixels on the left and right edges of input images will be removed. Applications must take special care to draw these regions properly.	false
`stripWhitespaceY`	If true, blank pixels on the top and bottom edges of input images will be removed. Applications must take special care to draw these regions properly.	false
`alphaThreshold`	From 0 to 255. Alpha values below this are treated as zero when whitespace is stripped.	0
`filterMin`	The minification filter for the texture.	Nearest
`filterMag`	The magnification filter for the texture.	Nearest
`wrapX`	The wrap setting in the x direction for the texture.	ClampToEdge
`wrapY`	The wrap setting in the y direction for the texture.	ClampToEdge
`format`	The format the texture will use in-memory.	RGBA8888
`alias`	If true, two images that are pixel for pixel the same will only be packed once.	true
`outputFormat`	The image type for output pages, “png” or “jpg”.	png
`jpegQuality`	From 0 to 1. The quality setting if `outputFormat` is “jpg”.	0.9
`ignoreBlankImages`	If true, texture packer won’t add regions for completely blank images.	true
`fast`	If true, the texture packer will not pack as efficiently but will execute much faster.	false
`debug`	If true, lines are drawn on the output pages to show the packed image bounds.	false
`combineSubdirectories`	If true, the directory containing the settings file and all subdirectories are packed as if they were in the same directory. Any settings files in the subdirectories are ignored.	false
`flattenPaths`	If true, subdirectory prefixes are stripped from image file names. Image file names should be unique.	false
`premultiplyAlpha`	If true, the RGB will be multiplied by the alpha. See here for more information.	false
`useIndexes`	If false, image names are used without stripping any image index suffix.	true
`limitMemory`	If true, only one image is in memory at any given time, but each image will be read twice. If false, all images are kept in memory during packing but are only read once.	true
`grid`	If true, images are packed in a uniform grid, in order.	false
`scale`	For each scale, the images are scaled and an entire atlas is output.	`[ 1 ]`
`scaleSuffix`	For each scale, the suffix to use for the output files. If omitted, files for multiple scales will be output with the same name to a subdirectory for each scale.	`[ "" ]`
`scaleResampling`	For each scale, the type of interpolation used for resampling the source to the scaled size. One of `nearest`, `bilinear` or `bicubic`.	`[ bicubic ]`
`atlasExtension`	The file extension to be appended to the atlas filename.	.atlas
`prettyPrint`	If true, removes all whitespace except newlines.	true
`legacyOutput`	If true, the atlas uses a less efficient output format. Exists for backwards-compatibility reasons.	true

Texture packer use the filters specified in the Texture.TextureFilter enum. The options for filterMin and filterMag are as following:
Nearest: no filtering, no mipmaps
Linear: filtering, no mipmaps
MipMap & MipMapLinearLinear: filtering, smooth transition between mipmaps
MipMapNearestNearest: no filtering, sharp switching between mipmaps
MipMapLinearNearest: filtering, sharp switching between mipmaps
MipMapNearestLinear: no filtering, smooth transition between mipmaps

NinePatches

If an image file name ends with “.9” just before the file extension, it is considered a ninepatch. See ninepatches. The image must have a 1px transparent border. The upper and left edge may optionally have one contiguous line of black pixels which denote the split information, ie what part of the ninepatch will stretch. The bottom and right edge may optionally have one contiguous line of black pixels which denote the padding information, ie how content on top of the NinePatch should be inset. When this image is packed, the 1px border is removed and the split and padding information stored in the pack file. TextureAtlas allows an instance of NinePatch to created for the region using the split information.

Image indexes

If an image file name ends with underscore and then a number (eg animation_23.png), the number is considered the “index” and is stored separately. The image name is stored without the underscore and index. TextureAtlas allows a list of all images with the same name to be retrieved, ordered by index. This makes it easy to pack animations without losing the order of the frames.

Packing

The TexturePacker class is in gdx-tools.jar, which is in the extensions directory of the nightlies/releases zip files. You only need TexturePacker as a tool to process your image files for your application, you don’t need it as a dependency to run your application. To run the packer you need both gdx.jar and gdx-tools.jar. Note: gdx.jar must be in the same directory as gdx-tools.jar, for it to run without exceptions

//*NIX (OS X/Linux)
java -cp gdx.jar:gdx-tools.jar com.badlogic.gdx.tools.texturepacker.TexturePacker inputDir outputDir packFileName

//WINDOWS
java -cp gdx.jar;gdx-tools.jar com.badlogic.gdx.tools.texturepacker.TexturePacker inputDir outputDir packFileName

TexturePacker can also be run from the standalone nightly without gdx.jar (i.e. without the rest of libGDX at all), just substitute runnable-texturepacker.jar for gdx.jar;gdx-tools.jar in the above.

inputDir is the root directory containing the images. outputDir is the output directory where the packed images will be placed. packFileName is the name of the pack file and the prefix used for the output packed image files.

If outputDir is omitted, files will be placed in a new directory that is a sibling to inputDir with the suffix “-packed”. If packFileName is omitted, “pack” is used.

While texture packing is intended to be a fully automated process, there has also been a nice UI contributed by Obli (though slightly out of date): TexturePacker GUI (check out its up to date successor). There is also a commercial product at texturepacker.com which is completely unrelated to libgdx’s texture packer and has a UI, many features and nice documentation.

Automatic packing

During development it can be convenient to have the desktop application run TexturePacker before starting the game:

public class DesktopGame {
	public static void main (String[] args) throws IOException {
		Settings settings = new Settings();
		settings.maxWidth = 512;
		settings.maxHeight = 512;
		TexturePacker.process(settings, "../images", "../game-android/assets", "game");

		new LwjglApplication(new Game(), "Game", 320, 480, false);
	}
}

Each time the game is run, all the images are packed. This can be especially convenient when giving a build to an artist, who can then try out new images without even knowing the game is using packed images. If many images are packed, the fast setting can be useful to avoid waiting.

Note: When loading files from the classpath, Eclipse usually will not reflect changes to files that are updated externally. The project with the changed files must be manually refreshed in Eclipse. During development files can be loaded through the filesystem instead, where this is not an issue.

TextureAtlas

The TexturePacker output is a directory of page images and a text file that describes all the images packed on the pages. This shows how to use the images in an application:

TextureAtlas atlas;
atlas = new TextureAtlas(Gdx.files.internal("packedimages/pack.atlas"));
AtlasRegion region = atlas.findRegion("imagename");
Sprite sprite = atlas.createSprite("otherimagename");
NinePatch patch = atlas.createPatch("patchimagename");

TextureAtlas reads the pack file and loads all the page images. TextureAtlas.AtlasRegions can be retrieved, which are TextureRegions that provides extra information about the packed image, such as the frame index or any whitespace that was stripped. Sprites and NinePatches can also be created. If whitespace was stripped, the created Sprite will actually be a TextureAtlas.AtlasSprite, which allows the sprite to be used (mostly) as if whitespace was never stripped.

Note that findRegion is not very fast, so the value returned should be stored rather than calling this method each frame. Also note that createSprite and createNinePatch allocate a new instance.

TextureAtlas holds on to all the page textures, disposing the TextureAtlas will dispose all the page textures.

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