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View Full Version : SDK question: Decoupling bitmaps loader and UV assignment.

^Lele^
04-23-2009, 04:58 PM
It so happens that I have a scene with loads of big displacement maps.
Most of them are the same exact file, with identical settings, BUT for the UV channel they are assigned to.
Hence, they cannot be instanced, and eat up loads of resources.
Now, my question is simple enough: is it possible to split the image loading and the UVs assignment?
That way, the map would be loaded once, and then piped through the UV assignment as an instance, rather than having many copies of the bitmaptexture with different UVs.

now is something like
Bmp Bmp Bmp
| | |
UVs UVs UVs

Then it would be like
Bmp
/ | \
UVs UVs UVs

While it seems simple enough, a first look at the SDK seems to make it pretty hard to have a texturemap plugin that accepts a bitmapTexture as map, and then touches the UVs: it seems to be able to only evaluate the pixelcolor through the ShadingContext, which contains UV coordinates and seems hard to access for modification.
It may be trivial to some of you guys, but before delving into it too long, i'd like to have a clearer idea if this can be done at all.

Thanks a lot for your help,
Lele.

P.s.: do I at least win a prize for best technical ascii art? :P
ypuech
04-24-2009, 11:27 AM
Hi,

Do you want to develop a texturemap plugin ? They are very hard to develop and limited as you've seen...

Have you looked at using bitmap pager or disactivating bitmaps shown in the viewport to preserve memory (See http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/reducing_memory/reducing_memory.htm).
^Lele^
04-24-2009, 12:17 PM
Eh, that's exactly what we are trying to do: develop a UV lookup node, much like those in xsi and maya.
What's scary is that it's not there yet, hence my question about its overall doability in max.
I'd love to hear also from someone from AD, if at all possible.
I'll post in the area too.
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04-24-2009, 12:17 PM
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