I’ve noticed games like Unreal and Gears of War have amazing texture resolution for each of their meshes, and I recently heard of a process that would allow up to a 12K map, be compressed down to a 1K map to contain all of those high resolution details while having a usable map size. Is this possible to do? And if so how is it done? I am really curious to figure this out to further push the textures of my characters.
A few examples of image maps and texture layout that still show an extreme amount of detail:
http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/dw/4/view_entries/finals_1_2711.html
http://www.gameartisans.org/contests/dw/4/view_entries/finals_1_4588.html
Any help would greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!!
-Menty