Best Texture Filetype

[cum. m+d]

Hey guys, my whole production has been using .tiff format for all our textures. I find that they are heavy and hard to load. What do you think?
Is there a recommended better format? We have a TON of textures coming from Substance and I'd like the ideal format that vray would chew through better.

[sharktacos]

For most textures (displacement maps being an exception, where you need EXR) PNG works fine. Ideally though you would want to convert all your textures, once they are finalized, to mipmaps (.tx).

[francomanko]

It depends on what you are doing but for renders I really just use jpeg for most textures, tiff for 16bit where necessary, never have i converted to tx, but thats not to say you shouldnt.

[t.petrov]

If you're using tons of textures (1-150gb) like most VFX shots then you need to convert your files to tiled tiffs/exrs.
EXRs are always 16bit per channel, so for diffuse or similar channels you want to use TIFFs, because they can be 8bits per channel.
EXR and TIFFs are the only formats that support tiling in V-Ray.
Also you want mipmap enabled and it is not a good idea to set too small filter size for your textures.

[sharktacos]

it is not a good idea to set too small filter size for your textures.

Can you elaborate more why that is? Not sure I'm following. Thanks

[jasonhuang1115]

If you're using tons of textures (1-150gb) like most VFX shots then you need to convert your files to tiled tiffs/exrs.
EXRs are always 16bit per channel, so for diffuse or similar channels you want to use TIFFs, because they can be 8bits per channel.
EXR and TIFFs are the only formats that support tiling in V-Ray.
Also you want mipmap enabled and it is not a good idea to set too small filter size for your textures.

Hey petrov, in the scenario above, for 8-bits per channel textures (diffuse or similar), how is using .tx versus using tiles tiffs in V-Ray?

[vlado]

.tx files are tiled TIFF files, so I'm not exactly sure what you are asking?

Best regards,
Vlado

[jasonhuang1115]

.tx files are tiled TIFF files, so I'm not exactly sure what you are asking?

Best regards,
Vlado

Thanks Vlado. Good to know that .tx = tiled TIFF. You just answered my question.

[t.petrov]

Can you elaborate more why that is? Not sure I'm following. Thanks

If you lower the filter size (filter and preFilter parameters on the file node) V-Ray will load lower mipmap levels (mipmap level 0 is the original image) because it thinks you want sharper textures. This can destroy the performance of your render, because more data needs to be loaded and processed.

[sharktacos]

Got it, thanks