Large texture maps and antialiasing

[tricky]

I am producing a set of images with some large areas of stone flooring. Due to the layout of the joints (and the fact that BerconTile 3.0/MultiTexture support with XREFs has an issue), I am having to use large texture maps for the materials.

The texture maps are 3000x3000 pixels and this covers an area of 10m x 10m of stone paving. I am wondering what people favour as AA settings to try to keep the joint lines as crisp as possible as they extend away from the camera.

I am using a joints texture which has the fine black lines on a white background to add a small amount of bump detail to the floor.

What I am finding is that if I reduce the blur amount to 0.01 (which is as low as it will go in the bitmap settings), the bump seems to disappear.

There are a number of areas to tweak:-

1) Bitmap Blur settings (default 1.0, but often I set this as low as it will go which is 0.01. However, doing this on a mump map seems to loose the bump effect)

2) Bitmap filtering (Pyramidal/Summed Area/None)

3) Image Sampler (currently set to Adaptive DMC min=1, max=8, Clr thresh=0.005)

4) Antialiasing Filter (currently set to OFF)

Which parameters have most effect over this type of bitmap blurring?

[Crayox13]

I posted a similar thread in render theory, I too wanted to know how to get sharp renders and that extra detail. I see you don't use AA filters, a while back (I just remembered) I read that some other people don't use them either. How do you then post produce the render? I mean it's all edgy, and...can't find the right word

[tricky]

The way I understand it, aa filters slow down the rendering process. If you have your Image Sampler settings optimised, it alone should handle the aa, so you don't need to use a filter.

[Crayox13]

Wouldn't I need more than what I use now - DMC 3, 6....or 4, 8 (min, max)? What settings do you use?

[Neilg]

I find converting bump maps to normal maps can help get a bit more detail out - http://developer.nvidia.com/object/p...s_plugins.html

I've not done that for a while though because I model all my tiles now. If it's got a really weird layout, take the black/white map you're using and convert it to paths in photoshop/illustrator. you can then then export that as .ai and bring into max as linework. It'll need cleaning up, but it's useable.

[dellis]

Thanks for the link cubicle!!!!!

[flino2004]

maybe I'm wrong but 10M x 10M and 3000px seems low....I think, depending how close you are, I use arroway textures and they look very good but they are 4 times bigger (6000px) for 7x7-8x8 meters

[tricky]

maybe I'm wrong but 10M x 10M and 3000px seems low....I think, depending how close you are, I use arroway textures and they look very good but they are 4 times bigger (6000px) for 7x7-8x8 meters

Yes, it is a bit low, but I am trying to limit textures as there are quite a few on this project. We will basically render out the full size render and assess if the textures are big enough. The images are 3-4000 pixels across, so as long as a 10m wide area of paving isn't spanning the full width of the image, it 'should' be fine.

[3DMK]

There are a number of areas to tweak:-

1) Bitmap Blur settings (default 1.0, but often I set this as low as it will go which is 0.01. However, doing this on a mump map seems to loose the bump effect)

2) Bitmap filtering (Pyramidal/Summed Area/None)

3) Image Sampler (currently set to Adaptive DMC min=1, max=8, Clr thresh=0.005)

4) Antialiasing Filter (currently set to OFF)

Which parameters have most effect over this type of bitmap blurring?

When I want really crisp textures I usually turn of Bitmap filtering altogether as this seems to make the biggest difference.

I also try to limit my AA to 1 min 4 max as a higher AA settings seem to blur details a bit too much...especially textures

Hope this helps