Which file format does unity support as 16 bit without recompressing it?

Unity Engine
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1

I want to import my own colour safe dithered 16 bit images without unity ruining them. Is it possible?

2

As unity does not support dithering on any platform I would assume the best bet is the 16bit texture format given you did it right (its RGB 565 not ARGB4).

normally on iOS PNG would be best for the iOS PNG compressor, but as unity converts it into an internal representation that aspect is without importance

3

It should be 4444 as I need alpha channel?

4

Hmm unsure what format RGBA 16bit uses. Did you try that? (you need to switch the texture to Advanced texture type so you can override the format in the import)

Normally I would have said: use ARGB32 and PVRTC 4bbp or above 16bit alpha format, as I’m unsure on what transfers how well if you don’t use ARGB32

5

pvr looks crud with alpha though

6

if you want to do 2D pixel perfect then thats true but there you won’t get around ARGB32 potentially cause iOS has no dithering, its a 32bit gpu not a 8-16bit gpu so your dithered images might be destructive not beneficial (not even the pre 3GS had a pure 16bit gpu), otherwise though the 4bbp alpha is well especially when you do it in the imagination tech visual editor (unity uses the command line one + the iOS sdk one, you can replace them with the current versions in case they are outdated yourself)