How long are complex textures stored in memory?

[Piezo_]

How long are texture combinations stored in memory?

For example, let's say someone's character skin consists of a texture string which combines several colorized and uncolorized layers, with thousands of possibilities.

Is every result stored in memory indefinitely once it is rendered, or does it remain only as long as it is used, or is it not stored at all, meaning the engine calculates it every time it's drawn?

Also, is it only the client that stores this, or would the server have a copy, too?

[Pyrollo]

That's an excellent question. It could be interesting to know for all the signs libs that potentially generates loads of textures.

[Piezo_]

That's an excellent question. It could be interesting to know for all the signs libs that potentially generates loads of textures.

Oh, crap. I was just thinking about character_creator and banners.

Signs are a whole new level.

[wziard]

Yes, I'm very interested in this question as well. As soon as I have time I'll try to find out from the engine source code.
On my server a few children are playing using a raspberry pi and texture memory is the main bottleneck.

[GreenXenith]

Generated textures are stored until the server shuts down/restarts.

[rubenwardy]

Generated textures are stored on the client only, so are stored until the client disconnects. The only way a server restart affects this is because a server restart will disconnect all clients

This is something I'd like to see fixed, ie: more intelligent caching and garbage collection

[Piezo_]

Generated textures are stored on the client only, so are stored until the client disconnects. The only way a server restart affects this is because a server restart will disconnect all clients

This is something I'd like to see fixed, ie: more intelligent caching and garbage collection

If they're only allocated clientside, that relieves my primary concern (memory usage on my server), but it's definitely still an issue.