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View Full Version : Best image file format rendering to Mental Ray?

Trickz
08-21-2007, 11:13 AM
Hey guys, just wondering what you think the best file format is for image textures, bump maps etc rendering with Mental Ray. I've been saving files as IFF but I read somewhere .map files were the fastest/most efficient for Mental Ray work.

Anyone have a preference on the file types they like to use?
brogh
08-21-2007, 11:53 AM
Yep that's true, but the thing is that with map files mental ray access to those files is direct, they're not swapped trough ram, but they have to be on the hard disk of the machine that you're rendering with to be useful, you can't put them on a network share ( of course you can but it will be the same as using a tiff or iff ) wich is great if you have one machine, on many machines you have to copy them to local hard disk of each machine wich can be a long operation depending on the size/number of tex you have to use.

Also it incorporates a kind of "texture lod" if you use pyramidal options when making maps, wich automatically stores in the file low to high quality version of the texture, so, if you have an object far away from camera MR loads the "low quality" version of it and as it comes nearer it loads the higher versions of it.

Altough the size of the image in map format increases a little bit, but actually hard disk space is cheap in term of money.

Usually i use iff's or tiffs

Cheers
Trickz
08-21-2007, 08:04 PM
That's excellent info Brogh, thanks for such a detailed reply
brogh
08-22-2007, 05:43 AM
Glad to help if i can ;)

Cheers
smaragden
08-23-2007, 10:00 AM
We use two scripts in Photoshop that iv'e made.
Check them out here. (http://www.madcrew.se/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=1)
http://madcrew.se/images/stories/techBlog/psscreen.jpg (http://madcrew.se/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=1)
ienrdna
08-26-2007, 09:27 PM
What the hell is .map format, newer heard of it?
tonytrout
08-27-2007, 06:22 AM
We use two scripts in Photoshop that iv'e made.
Check them out here. (http://www.madcrew.se/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=1)






Big thanks smaragden, very usefull.
brogh
08-27-2007, 11:18 AM
hey smaragden

Thank you for you scirpts, i use them from long time, they're awesome !!

Just want to thank you


What the hell is .map format, newer heard of it?

Mental images file format, check in the documentation, there are many others also, ct, etc etc....

Cheers
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08-27-2007, 11:18 AM
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