Bad Texture Quality in close-ups

[fez-]

Hi!

I am using a Image as color-input for a texture (image size 4096*4096)
It works fine as long the camera is away from the surface to which the texture is applied.
But when I get near the surface the texture doesn't work anymore. (You can see the pixels of the lines (as if the lines weren't anti-aliased))
What can I do to avoid this problem?
(Bigger texture doesn't seem to work)

FEZ

[deke-kincaid]

Turn on your filter type on the file node to "Mip Map" or try one of the other types. Also you need to play with you filter and filter offset. Also make sure your using a multipixel filter in your renderglobals to get nicer antialiasing on the image as a whole. Another option that I havent tried yet that is new to maya 4 is the prefilter option on the file texture. You can look up all these options in the manuals. F1!

Deke Kincaid

[fez-]

Well, this doesn't realy fix the problem.
But this is because I described it the wrong way.
Anti-Aliasing is okay. But the texture is shown as dots (as if it was made out of a few pixels) but now the texture-file is 10000x10000 and I think this should be enough!!!
Okay I put a rendering of the scene to
http://www.the-fez.de/netz.jpg
The problem is the white-scale on the black surface....
It's just pixels.....
How can it be made to render as clean lines as they are in the file?????

FEZ

[gmask]

10kx10k.. man that is big.. are you zoom that far into that texture? Why is it so big? Have you tried a smaller map? This seems to me to be an issue of anti-aliasing .. check the Shading Sampels Override for the surface and then set the shading samples to a higher number like 2 or 4 and that should help. This will make your render slower but you shoudl get the clena lines.

g

[fez-]

Yep!
I do a real close-up (See http://www.the-fez.de/02-netz2.jpg)
I tried changing the surface parameters
(Tesselation up to 150x150 Sampling Override to 32/32)
Hmm... I put up everything to the max and it still looks like the version with the low parameters (Like 02-netz2.jpg)....
What could it be????
I thought sampling override would help. But it doesn't

Anyone some other idea????

FEZ

[ryan3d]

You probably already did this, I dont know but the only thing i can think of is with a file that big the resolution of the texture file should be as big as say 300 pix or higher? if your resolution is small the texture file is gonna be low quality.

In reply to:

I do a real close-up (See http://www.the-fez.de/02-netz2.jpg)
I tried changing the surface parameters
(Tesselation up to 150x150 Sampling Override to 32/32)
Hmm... I put up everything to the max and it still looks like the version with the low parameters (Like 02-netz2.jpg)....
What could it be????
I thought sampling override would help. But it doesn't

Anyone some other idea????

FEZ

[teacup]

Have you tried to set your Multipixel filtering type to Quadratic B-spline with a high pixel widthX/Y? Also lowering RGB contrast treshold should help. I assume you already tried to raise your shading/max shading attributes, you checked the filtering under your texture menu and so on...

Hope it helps
Stefano Oggeri
Technical director

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3search design.
t +39.011.5637744
f +39.011.5618341
www.3search.it
Via XX settembre 10, Torino
ITALY

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[gmask]

Hmmm.. seeing as how you tex mmap is 10k x10k I wouldn't expect it to look that pixelated. Another idea that would work much better than a texture map is to use geometry. If you made the dial texture in illustrator you could save the paths and import them.

g

[fez-]

Yep!
I really tried everything!
Shading / Max Shading (Surface or Renderglobals) => No changes
Tesselation (Surface) => No changes
Multipixel Quadric B-Spline whole parameter range (Renderglobals) => No changes
Prefiltering (Texture-File-Node) => Changes but it only gets plurred
Filtertype and Sterngth (Texture-File-Node) => Nearly no changes (some of it a bit mor blurry) but still pixaleted
Texture Warp with different parameters (Surface) => No changes

This should be it....
Could it be, that Maya changes the texture-resolution? Because in my opinion 10kx10k Texture-Size with shading=20; Max Shading=20 should just be enough....

Still needing some help :-(((((
FEZ

[teacup]

Are you using Maya IFF for your texture? Have you checked that your alpha channel is empty? You could also try using lower texture resolution and lower AA setting (to increase rendering speed), but rendering at double resolution and then scaling your frames at 50% in post.
Hope it helps

Boonet

[stevesayer]

This is a really stupid suggestion, but I think we're all running out of ideas here.

After changing the texture (increasing the resolution), did you make sure it got updated in Maya? --If you left Maya running while you went back and changed the texture, you have to explicitly tell Maya to reload the file texture. Open the Attribute Editor for that texture and click the big 'Reload File Texture' button.

You should also double-check the filename that Maya is using, make sure that your new high-res texture has the correct name.

I'm mentioning these things because it really, really looks like Maya is just using a low-res version of your texture.

Finally, I know that there are setups (for gaming, usually) which will automatically use a low res version of a texture sometimes, and higher res versions at other times. Normally the high-res version is used when the camera is close, but perhaps there's a glitch in your scene. Anyone out there know how this works, and if it might be a factor here?

Good luck.

-Steve

[fez-]

Hi Guys!

I found the problem....
And now I'm really ashamed
It was a low resolution file....

Here is what happend...
I created a tif out of photoshop (381 Mb )
opened it in fcheck
and saved it to iff
Okay thats it....
I got the bad images....
Well fcheck changes the resolution when saving (without prompting)
Okay it was my fault....
Once again
VERY VERY VERY SORRY.....
Now I've learned how to use fcheck [promise]
BTW: Is there another way to get iff files (plugins for photoshop...)??

FEZ

[tbriggs]

I had just that problem for a recent shot (the gross-out flight into Bill Murray's mouth in Osmosis Jones, when he eats the egg). I had a 4K map that looked fine at a distance and then I had to move the camera in to graze the surface of the object (his rotten gumline). No amount of resolution in a single map would hold up, so I built a means of seamlessly combining two maps, one that covered the whole object and one that only covered the area needed in the close-up.

After I finished it I realized you could do it more simply with a layered shader (or texture, though I've never tried that). Make a shader with the close-up map and position the map by tinkering with the place2d node so it only maps the area where you need the close-up. Layer this over the other shader that has the full coverage map. Pay attention to the edges, and/or make a soft-edged alpha for the close-up map, and there you have it...

Now I see that you had the wrong file, but look at this method as a means of bringing your texture data way down and still holding quality. 10K maps-ouch!

/*In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice they are very different*/