Importing Images Scale Issue

[channel96]

Hi again, I'm using Maya 2008 complete and am making a model of the Earth and obviously this requires importing a very large image to texture the image. The largest image I can import is 300 dpi and 8000*8000 pixels, which when pulling into the detail, falls apart. Is there anyway I can import larger images? Perhaps it's because I'm not using unlimited?

Thanks

Martin

[joojaa]

QUOTE(Channel96 @ 05/21/09, 12:22 PM) [snapback]308100[/snapback]
300 dpi ?

FYI:

DPI does not exist except when you push things to a printer even so its only a value thats repsected some of the time. DPI doent maen a thing outside desktop publishing.

QUOTE
Hi again, I'm using Maya 2008 complete and am making a model of the Earth and obviously this requires importing a very large image to texture the image.

Actually it does not, its all about what area your interested in a 2k map is fine for most uses, even if you need a insane zoom into this spiot on earth you dont need a very detailed map, what you do is you layer a progressively smaller area map on top of another.

So no you dont need a very big map for modelling erath. You need a map thet works for your distance.
QUOTE
The largest image I can import is 300 dpi and 8000*8000 pixels,

Your virwport is limitted to a 8k map yes, but therrenderer s not tough theres a slight issue of practical mempry usage.

[channel96]

thanks for your feedback. I have managed to create an Earth that looks pretty nice by adjusting shaders and without changing the detail. The notion of layering a shader with progressively more detail confuses me, the only way I can think to do this would be to duplicate the sphere and make it ever-so slightly larger for each step-up so as not to mess with the UV map

[joojaa]

Im not talking of objects just textures. In any case the number one problem beginners face is making too big textures in hopes of better quality. It dont exactly work that way. Bigger textures just ensure slower performance with no correlation to betterment of quality. IT can as well go worse because of filtering needs (so you get worse quality and worse perfromance).

Ok let me make you a example:

CODE
{//pasete into maya script editor and run.
  file -f -new;
  modelEditor -edit -displayAppearance smoothShaded
              -gr 0 -displayTextures 1 -activeOnly false modelPanel4;

  nurbsPlane -p 0 0 0 -ax 0 1 0 -w 5 -lr 1 -d 3 -u 1 -v 1 -ch 1;
  renderCreateBarCB -as2DTexture "" checker;
  connectAttr -f checker1.outColor lambert1.color;
  //lets make it smaller
  setAttr "place2dTexture1.coverage" 0.25 0.25;
  setAttr "place2dTexture1.translateFrame" 0.375 0.375;

  renderCreateBarCB -as2DTexture "" checker;
  connectAttr -f checker2.outColor checker1.defaultColor;
  //lets make it smaller
  setAttr "place2dTexture2.coverage" 0.5 0.5;
  setAttr "place2dTexture2.translateFrame" 0.25 0.25;

  renderCreateBarCB -as2DTexture "" checker;
  connectAttr -f checker3.outColor checker2.defaultColor;
}

See what i do is place a refined texture inside the other one. This si incidentally alsoo how Google earth works. theres not much point in keeping millions of pixels that wont be visible in the filnal picture. So for example if you need a earh form orbit onto a film screen you will only need about a 4k texture of HALF the earth, if on the otherhand you need for full HD a 2k texture is enough. If younee dto zoom in on city you need about 4-5 2k textures instead... note 4-5 2k textures is LESS memory than one 8k texture that does a worse job (because one 8k texture is 16 times bigger than a 2k texture)

[channel96]

I like your thinking, maya is crashing whenever I introduce any complex lighting or even render in mental ray. I'm getting syntax errors for the script, probably something I'm doing wrong as I'm not familiar with mel

[gmask]

QUOTE(Channel96 @ 05/21/09, 06:17 AM) [snapback]308117[/snapback]
I like your thinking, maya is crashing whenever I introduce any complex lighting or even render in mental ray.

tell us about your computer

[channel96]

I'm running a g5 mac with specs of 4*2.5ghz processor, 4gb ddr2 sdram. and running on osx

[joojaa]

Yes, that would explain the dying. Thing is shading and lightning is about taking your machines power in consideration. Theres no magic in calclating forever, thats easy doing it so it takes a minute and get 90% of the look is the key to being pro.

[gmask]

does it? his machine doesn't seem horribly under powered but then again I don't know how complex he means

[joojaa]

QUOTE(gmask @ 05/23/09, 06:42 PM) [snapback]308225[/snapback]
his machine doesn't seem horribly under powered

Its a bit under memoried. And yes complex means many things. Certainly my definition of complex lighting would kill that machine This can become a very serious issue when rendering out print size things in one tile.

Its a bit like as with asking why rendering is slow. When beginners just have never experienced anything that would have taken time in their life. And the sudden understanding that taking a n^n algorithm really fast gets out of your hand. Since they have never done anything remotely computationally intensive they think that they can take the hit for the extra quality. They can't.

The question reflects this he thinks a a 8k texture isnt enough for earth because he knows earh has very much fidelity and is big. Well yes but a coffeepot has the same kind of infinite fidelity need as earth does so the situation doesn't differ in any way. Furthermore texture memory consumption is on the n*n Curve, as a 8k texture uses up 256 megabytes of memory and the next even slot of 16k uses a gigabyte of memory. And both of these are quite a hit on hi cap of memory usage (yes mayas 32 bit on mac! So a gigabyte is a big deal). That is unless he converst his maps to a pyramidial format: bot,map....

So 3d at any rate is walking on the very thin edge of what you'd like to do and what you can do with any sensible computational overhead.