most optimized texture file type?

[shadevfx]

Is there a file format that Vray likes best for textures? Just wondering if one format or another is more efficient.

[snivlem]

tiled exr images I think.

[cpnichols]

ideally, exrs, tiled with mipmapping... Currently, the mipmaping has some issues... I also use png and tga

[shadevfx]

very interesting.

Ill do some testing and see if it improves this lagging issue we're having. Im not entirely convinced its textures, but its leaning that way...

[jensl]

If you're not working on scenes that require tons of memory, or not working with gigantic images, wouldn't tiled EXRs be the slowest, especially compared to something else with good compression, jpg even?

My understanding is that tiled EXRs are fastest if you're rendering stuff that needs more memory than you're dynamic memory limit (so you're computer has to do hdd swapping), otherwise, smaller is better. Someone else chime in if this is incorrect, but this seems right unless reading a select few tiles from the EXR ends up being less than reading the whole texture as a TGA, but doesn't that need to be done once, regardless? Now I'm curious about testing this!

[snivlem]

From my understanding any renderer does not know about a compression on sourceimages and at render level there is no difference between a bitmap or a jpg. Compression is thrown out the window.

[jensl]

Ahh interesting, this goes back to my understanding of the .map format (memory mapped texture) in MR. The idea was this was the most ideal format as it was MR-native, and any texture apart from that had to be converted into a .map at rendertime and loaded into memory. So you're saying that VRay is doing something to this effect to, so there's not a significant difference between textures, the real meat of it being bit depth and size?

[snivlem]

I don't know how Vray works, I'm just understanding the settings. It's just that with most if not all renderers, the larger the map resolution, the more memory it takes regardless of the compression on the original picture:

256x256 = 256kb of memory
1024x1024 = 2MB
2048x2048 = 16MB
4096x4096 = 64MB

etc...

[cpnichols]

I don't know how Vray works, I'm just understanding the settings. It's just that with most if not all renderers, the larger the map resolution, the more memory it takes regardless of the compression on the original picture:

256x256 = 256kb of memory
1024x1024 = 2MB
2048x2048 = 16MB
4096x4096 = 64MB

etc...

Not if you are using mipmapping... that is the whole point of using mipmapping. Vray just started to support this through tiled exrs.

But to answer your question jensl, if you scene is simple, and does not need super big textures, use a fast loading map. But keep in mind that jpg will not use less ram then the same image as tiff, because a pixel is a pixel. But it will load faster because it uses less space on disk.

[snivlem]

Not if you are using mipmapping... that is the whole point of using mipmapping. Vray just started to support this through tiled exrs.

Yes, you're right.

It would be really nice if Vray4Maya had an automated "Cache" system whereby your textures are converted to the optimized format ala Maya/mental ray's automatic .map system.

Might be worth a small feature request...It's great to be able to backup old scenes where you keep the small sourceimages and delete the huge .map textures in the cache folder and not having to just keep them.