Anyone messed with the .map format in MR?

[slebed]

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way of loading the .map file into max. I've tried several methods, but nothing seemed to work. This is something I added to the wishlist on the Area board a while ago. Autodesk, or someone else, really needs to write an i/o loader for this.

[Steve Green]

That's a real shame - Max seems to be getting worse at handling large bitmaps with the last few releases (or the memory requirements have been increasing, to the same end result)

It would be nice to have a free way of handling larger bitmaps without having to kit out everything with 64-bit OS and machines.

Cheers,

Steve

[slebed]

I stand corrected, I tried out what they said in that forum link you posted and I was able to load in .map files into max and render them. Looks like I'll be converting a bunch of textures now to see how robust this is.

[Steve Green]

Cool - do you know if the converter has been updated recently?

The only version I have is the one that came with Maya 5, so I'm not sure if it will work OK, or if it requires a more up-to-date version.

I'll give it a go later anyway, see if it works OK.

Thanks,

Steve

[Steve Green]

Well, the util that I have doesn't look Photoshop CS TGA files, but it's fine with jpegs - and the map files it creates seem to work OK with Max 9.

.map doesn't appear as a file type but you can still load them (apparently) fine.

Wish I'd known this a month ago, it would have been great on a powers of 10 job I did.

- Steve

[JHN]

So how does the loading of .map files work then... couldn't find the link Slebed mentioned.

Thanx,
-Johan

[Steve Green]

From what I recall, you can enable this by removing the "hidden" settings for mib_texture_lookup2 and Lookup Background in base.mi.

Of course, you've still got to convert them to a map format in the first place...

Max has an option in the renderer to convert bitmaps on render to .map, but I don't see how you can convert large bitmaps than the material editor can comfortably handle.

So...

Maya ships with the conversion utility, as well as the XSI demo - which does work.

Once you have the map files, you can use the enabled shaders to load the .map files.

Unfortunately, they're quite basic, so you can't use the settings that you would have in a normal bitmap loader (tiling, RGB Output levels etc.)

Hope that helps.

- Steve

[JHN]

Yes, it helps, makes me wanna stay with the default texture setup :)

-Johan

[Steve Green]

Heh,

Yeah - it's handy if you want to use really large bitmaps though.

Shame it's not really supported that well.

- Steve

[JHN]

I agree! I toyed with XSI and it has it integrated pretty good... But I have a best 4k maps so I'm taking my changes... swapping them with 1k when the it's not a close or medium shot.

That'll have to do :) I did found that Dave from maxplugins wrote a script to automate the whole proces. But even then it's too much of an hassle for a large amount of "small" maps, in my opinion.

Cheers,
-Johan

[maxplugins]

If you are using a lot of 4K maps, then converting them to MAPs will probably make your rendering faster. Even if you aren't using a lot of them, it is worth testing.

Someone I know used the script to convert some of the NASA hi-res images and made a 2500x2500 render of the earth using a material with 7 21600x10800 pixel maps. Max had no problems whatsoever.

Dave

[thorsten hartmann]

Hi

we have some tread on the gmrf about this Map-Format + Bilinear Filtering for Map-Format.

Phenomenon for loading MAP-Picture + Bilinear Filtering:
http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/viewtopic.php?t=909&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Tutorial tread about using Nasa picture 32K for mapping a earth:
http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/viewtopic.php?t=735&highlight=big+map

tread about dave map-converter (script):
http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/viewtopic.php?t=430&highlight=big+map

tread abut jonathan mapconverter tool (.exe):
http://forum.german-mentalray-wiki.info/viewtopic.php?t=907&highlight=imfcopy

language Translater:
http://babelfish.yahoo.com/
http://www.google.de/language_tools?hl=eng

mfg
hot chip

[JHN]

Thanks for those links and tips! Probably not going to use it this project, since debugging time has been reduced to -1 days. So if we are not experiencing any memory issues I will stick with what we know works.

Next project I'll dive into maps, I know it's good, now for some time to fit it in the pipeline.

Cheers,
-Johan

[soulburn3d]

Yes, it helps, makes me wanna stay with the default texture setup :)

Hahaha! I totaly know where you're coming from :)

- Neil

[JHN]

:D

If it was just me I would probably do it without even thinking about it... but we are with more... and some people need to be educated and somebody will probably mess up 2 days before final render etc etc... you know... next time.. :)

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