Is it always necessary to add a bitmap filter attribute for tiled EXRs?

V-Ray V-Ray for Maya General
1

I’m trying to optimise a scene at the moment, and one thing I’ve not got a handle on is where I need to specify vray overrides in Maya.
We have a very heavy scene with many 8k textures saved to tiled EXR format; and I wasn’t sure if I need to go through every loader and add the bitmap filter attribute, or whether vray automatically filters tiled EXRs correctly to enable mipmap behaviour.

2

By default tiled EXR’s should be filtered correctly; just make sure that in the File nodes, the filtering is not set to Off. There should be no need to add V-Ray attributes to everything.

Best regards,
Vlado

3

Thanks Vlado, that’s a relief!

Is there any great need to play with the filtering these days at all? I’m a bit confused by the way Maya has multiple competing filtering settings within each loader and it’s not clear what takes precedence over what;
ie
“file attributes - filter type and pre filter”
Leave as default, or do we need to change to type = mipmap? Does VRay override this by default anyway meaning that anything other than “off” effectively means “on”
Is there any reason to use pre-filter? (other than to perform a severe blur)

“Effects - Filter” - this is where we control the amount of filtering VRay uses.

"Extra VRay Attributes "
“- override texture filter” - From what you say, this is on by default without needing to add the attribute?
“- texture filter” (type) - If I want to use the mipmap feature of tiled EXRs, am I forced to use “smooth with mipmaps” or are any of the other options valid?
“- smooth method” - Is the default of this, the default that VRay uses when you set the “file attributes - filter type” to anything other than none, even if this attribute is not added?

Sorry for asking what should be basic stuff, I think I’ve ‘got’ it, but just want to be sure I’m not making any wrong assumptions.

Thanks
p.

4

V-Ray doesn’t support pre filetering. If you turn it on, its value will be multiplied by the Filter in the Effect roll-out. This filter radius will affect only mipmaps and SAT. In the help about the “Texture Filter” attributes, there is a link called “Maya to V-Ray attributes” with short info about how we translate the “Filter Type” attribute.

5

Thanks for the clarifications Ivaylo!