Just for simple general question about textures and memory load.
If I use VrayBitmap and I load a standard image file format like jpg, png or tiff, Vray CPU loads all the textures at full resolution? Is there any difference on this matter from Vray 5 and 6 ?
Thanks in advance.
There shouldn’t be a difference in how the maps are loaded between V-Ray 5 and V-Ray 6. Is there anything suspicious?
Oh no, nothing suspicious, just my personal culture about Vray.
Is it correct that if I use VrayBitmap loading a file format like JPG, PNG or TIFF, the texture is loaded inside memory at full resolution, without any mipmap and it will be loaded also if it will never be engaged in the frame calculations?
I mean: if I want to save memory I have to switch to tx file format for on-demand mipmapping. Correct?
Or you developed something I’ve lost that does on-demand mipmapping in an automatic way also with standard image file format?
The formats that contain mipmapping are .tx and .tif.
Formats like regular TIF, PNG, and JPG could be loaded only with full resolution.
Edit. DDS could also have mipmapping, but it’s not supported by us with mipmapping.
Perfect.
Thank you for reply.
In addition to the info above. If you want to save memory further, tiled maps are needed. This will allow you to load only the tiles from the texture visible in your image. OpenEXR (.exr) format allows you to save mipmapped images that are also tiled. You could have mip-mapped and tiled .tx and .tif files as well.
We have a tool that comes with V-Ray, which can convert a regular image to a mipmapped tiled EXR.
Is this really correct @dimitar ? it’s not what the Docs say… V-Ray loads the textures as needed and automatically creates mip-map tiles for them (regardless of their texture type). As a result, the GPU memory consumption is decreased
Just wanted to be clear about this, also is there a setting for this to happen when using the CPU? …I’m in Maya though.
Thanks
Rodolfo
That’s what Lele also mentions here and there, it depends on the blur value of the bitmap as far as I remember. So when you put the blur value to 0.01 it will always use full resolution. Or does this only apply to tiled exr or tx files?
Applies to all file types
Dimitar is correct, V-Ray GPU mip-mapping option works in a different way
It is a very complicated system and will be deprecated soon(because it has many issues)
Just adding here.
We apply mip-mapping internally in V-Ray to every texture regardless of their format after they were loaded. This helps for a better sampling. However, this does not save memory.
V-Ray GPU is a separate renderer and Muhammed answered there.
Ah thanks quite an important detail.
Okay Dimitar and Muhammed, this information helps a lot to clarify how these texture files are being handled in Vray, thanks a bunch.
Sorry to come back guys but after digesting this info I still have an inquiry…
GPU works in a different way with mipmaping and Chaos is working on a different approach for the future.( Good)
CPU, all textures once loaded are Mipmaped automatically under the hood to improve sampling, does not save memory.
So there’s no need to change any settings in Vray rendering menu and no need to convert textures to mipmap prior to working ( as long as they are power of 2)…except a DDS texture.
I’m trying to update an answer in the Maya rendering forum but I want to be correct about it first.
Also the file texture attribute changing to Mipmap , does it help in any way with Vray?
Thanks again.
Hey @damaggio
There is no need to swap filtering to Mipmap, Sharp Mipmap is usually the best option. It is similar to Isotropic filtering in 3Ds Max
This filtering type introduced in V-Ray 5 helps on keeping sharp high frequency details in your bitmaps, without having to turn off blur/filtering, you could use filtering multipier of 0.2 for normal maps and bump maps
I don’t know if Sharp Mip-map is used by default in the file node internally, I will ask and get back to you
Best,
Muhammed
For the standard V-Ray CPU renderer, this is not recommended(In the past it was a common practice to get sharp texture detail, but it is not needed anymore). This is more about rendering speed, more than memory usage
We recommend leaving filtering on, unless you have bump/normal map that you need to have sharp detail. In this case you can decrease your filter multiplier to 0.2
For V-Ray GPU, filtering will still be used if you set filtering to Off. V-Ray GPU uses its special filtering, you cannot control it in the UI of Maya
You can add these controls through Attributes drop-down menu, V-Ray attributes
Best,
Muhammed
Okay, thanks Muhammed for adding this information on the post, very helpful.
