convert all texture to .tx format makes the render slower...

[jameshon1000]

Hi,

I am using VrayNext,update2 and trying to optimize the render by converting all my texture into .tx format hoping to decrease the render time. Unfortunately the render time didn't went down and even got slower (around 30%).
In maketx.exe the flags I am using are "maketx -v -u --oiio --checknan --filter lanczos3", which I copy straight from the arnold user guilde: https://docs.arnoldrenderer.com/disp...AF3DSUG/Maketx .
Am I missing anything or do I need to activate some setting in order to benefit from using .tx?

In Arnold converting textures to .tx makes a huge difference in render time and RAM usage, I wonder if Vray will have the same effect.

Thanks!

[^Lele^]

Try and use either the offline converter i provided, or the RMC menu one which comes with max.
Options (just as the maketx.exe) differ a bit (our makeTX uses slightly different defaults), so perhaps you will get a better outcome.

Should it stay similar, it'd be great if you could send a a sample to investigate what might be wrong to support.

In my tests, both memory usage and rendertime went down (in worst cases, the time loss was below 10%, in best cases, it went twice as quick.), while quality was between identical and appreciably better, but there could be specific cases where it's not so.

[DaveKW]

Are you using Normal maps? In our tests tx'ing those kills render time.

[^Lele^]

Are you using Normal maps? In our tests tx'ing those kills render time.

Make sure filtering for those maps is active.
As Rado was suggesting, if it was off it'd force the loading of the highest-sized mip level, which could slow down rendering.
This is of course also valid for jameshon1000 's bitmap loaders (which should also be VrayHDRI loaders, exclusively.).

[DaveKW]

Filtering is always default, and we always leave the blur value at 1. It's more about CPU throttling, if we tx Normal maps the CPU usage drops quite a bit.

[^Lele^]

Filtering is always default, and we always leave the blur value at 1. It's more about CPU throttling, if we tx Normal maps the CPU usage drops quite a bit.

Dave, that's gold.
We'll look into this on our side, but if you had a piece of scene which showed this behaviour, we'd be very glad to receive it (me, support, Vlado. how you please.)!

[DaveKW]

Unfortunately it isn't 100% reproducible. When we've had throttling in the past, we went back to using tif's for Normal and Bump maps and that seemed to solve the problem. We haven't tx'd them since and we've never had any issues.

[jameshon1000]

Thanks LeLe and Dave,

Where can I find the offline converter ^LeLe^ provided? Also I'm not sure which filtering should I activate, there seems to be a few boxes which are related to filtering.
I had include a print screen of the VRayHDRI I'm using.


For more information, my textures are exported from painter (8 bit tiff 1xx UDIMs) and convert everything into .tx.

[^Lele^]

Here's the offline one.
Your settings look good, should you get more measurable slowdowns, we'd of course be keen on seeing a scene which exhibited it.
p.s.: .tx files will go into the texture cache (last page of the v-ray settings), so ensure it's set to either big enough, or 0.

[jameshon1000]

Thanks for the script. I will try to investigate a bit more before packing a scene for you.

[dreidesign]

Here's the offline one.
Your settings look good, should you get more measurable slowdowns, we'd of course be keen on seeing a scene which exhibited it.
p.s.: .tx files will go into the texture cache (last page of the v-ray settings), so ensure it's set to either big enough, or 0.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but were exactly are these converted .tx files are saved? I couldnt find something like a location in the vray settings

[^Lele^]

The ones made by our scripts are saved side-by-side with the original files.
The ones which go in the texture cache mentioned above are in RAM.

[dreidesign]

Ok, thx for clarification

[dreidesign]

I hope it is ok, to write here even though its not 100% topic.
Reading all this .tx stuff here, got me interested, as I never tried this before.

I just ran a test, using a pretty normal scene, converted the textures to .tx and bitmaps to vray hdri, using the vray in-built script and hit render.

I activated memory tracking to compare the results between "normal" jpgs and max bitmap loader and .tx using vray hdri, and memory tracking showed higher memory usage on the .tx scene than on the normal:

normal jpg, 3dsmax bitmap loader

Bitmap	803,49 MiB
Bucket image sampler	260,62 MiB
Dynamic geometry	2,94 GiB
GI	268,95 MiB
Lights	96,90 MiB
Misc.	1,58 GiB
Misc. geometry	< 1 MiB
Static geometry	2,89 GiB
VFB	48,28 MiB
Frame startup	2,39 GiB
Frame total	8,85 GiB

.tx with vray hdri

Bitmap	828,99 MiB
Bucket image sampler	257,43 MiB
Dynamic geometry	2,94 GiB
GI	270,69 MiB
Lights	96,90 MiB
Misc.	1,57 GiB
Misc. geometry	< 1 MiB
Static geometry	2,89 GiB
Tiled bitmap	1,36 GiB
VFB	49,30 MiB
Frame startup	3,78 GiB
Frame total	10,23 GiB

The frame rendering times, were pretty close 1m 17s to 1m 21s.
I then compared ram usage via task manager, and there i got a totally different result. Normal jpg --> 36gb ram and .tx + vray hdri --> 26gb ram. This is really not bad, but I thought that you could save more ram and more render time, because many of our textures are pretty high res.

Is there maybe more to keep in mind?

[^Lele^]

What's to consider is here:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...usage-in-v-ray

When all is said and done, however, it'll be down to the view point, and if it allows for the loading of smaller atlases, rather than bigger ones.
Try it on a scene which has far away, yet detailed, environments, and the difference may be bigger.
If the subject's close to the camera, then perhaps the savings will be smaller.