Why do Casmos assets have to be in TX format? I just want to be able to open an image and make a quick chnage in Photoshop. Why are you guys making that so hard?

[JD3D_CGI]

Why do Casmos assets have to be in TX format? I just want to be able to open an image and make a quick chnage in Photoshop. Why are you guys making that so hard?

[glorybound]

I feel the same way. I don't use it because of this. It isn't often that a texture is spot on and doesn't need any tweaking.

[fixeighted]

Agreed; it is a little awkward and not very standard as a workflow.
In my opinion it should be up to the user to convert things to .tx where necessary.
It may be a 'soft' method of encouraging peeps to use the format but still...

[tsetso]

Hi guys! The main reason we use the .tx format is because of the performance advantages it offers when it comes to rendering.
These files are optimized in file size, mipmapped, use less memory and you can also get other benefits - like fewer Moire patterns because of the reduced aliasing at larger distances.

A tip I can give you for when you want to edit them - you can rename the extension from .tx to .png, for example.
I hope that answers some of your questions

[JD3D_CGI]

Ok, just rename them to PNG? and we can edit them? ok cool thanks good to know!

[fixeighted]

I actually thought they could only be renamed to .tiff, so that's news to me, thanks. It still is a bit of a pain of course, as we need to then reconvert them back to .tx.
Whilst that's not really a massive problem it can become a chore in terms of housekeeping.
That said, thanks for explaining the rationale

[seandunderdale]

an app like "bulk rename utility" would at least let yo batch rename some files from tx to whatever and back again.

[fixeighted]

Hmm...renaming to png doesn't work for me. It causes a 'program error' if opened in PS.

Renaming to tiff works.

[francomanko]

yeah having tx as default format doesnt seem like the best option, I would have thought it should really be upto the user to decide to convert to tx or not depending on their workflow etc.

[jshulters]

For anyone still looking for a better solution for this, I found out you can avoid all the copying and renaming hassle by using "Open As..." in Photoshop. The .tx files show up in Photoshop's file browser just fine, so navigate to your file but select "TIFF (*.TIF,*.TIFF)" in the dropdown just above the "Open" button. The .tx file will open like a normal image file and still have its tx extension. Make whatever tweaks you want to the image and use "Save As...", again use TIFF as the save as type but make sure your file name has the .tx extension when you save. Then you can load it just like any other tx file into a vray material. I'm not sure if it impacts any of the mipmapping or other features of tx files, but this seems to mimic the tif renaming trick without having to mess around with extra steps. Hope this helps.

[bruce_hart]

Thanks for the great tip. When saving again, it askes for the TIFF compression type. What are you saving as? None?

I still think it's a pain to deal with *.tx files in general. Would it be possible for Chaos to provide a tx format plugin for Photoshop? I use one to open WebP files for example
Cheers

[jshulters]

I used JPEG compression type. It made an even smaller file size than the original. I tried all the rest and they were much larger. And I didn't notice any problem in the material.

I too would love a tx file import plugin for Photoshop. As much as these files are used in gaming, I'm kinda puzzled why there isn't one already. I remember nVidia used to make a bunch of Photoshop tools to aid workflows.