Hi, I have a few questions about textures. In poser, when I applied a custom image for a texture it didnt "repeat,", but stretched to cover the person I was texturing, giving it a very pixy look. Did I do it worng or do textures not "repeat" in Poser? What is the prefered size of a texture? What is the preffered file format of a texture? What is the preffered DPI of a texture? Thanks. :)

No, they don't usually repeat. There are exceptions but I'm damned if I can remember what they are. Preferred size - as big as you can manage (RAM/HD/Processing speed all come into play here) Format - TIF or JPG (TIF because it's lossless, JPG because it's less space humgry) DPI is totally irrelevant. In fact, it's just about totally irrelevant in any case, unless you're specifying a flat image for printing in certain print formats, none of which I can remember the names of.

There are ways to make textures repeat, at least in P5, but Poser uses UV mapping (stretching over the object). There is no preferred size, but it is always a good idea to make it a power of 2 (512x512, 1024x1024, 2048x2048, etc), 4096x4096 being a good size for hires textures. IMHO, the best format is a non-lossy format like .bmp or (uncompressed) .tif, but a high-quality .jpg will do just as well. DPI is only relevant for printing. It does not matter at all. It's the pixel size, not DPI, that makes the difference. BYS

TIF because it's lossless???? not sure what that means non-lossy format ??? lost here too. Thanks for the fast replies. :)

Lossless - no compression in the format means the pixels you draw/scan for the texture will always look the way the did when you created the texture. A lossy format averages out the pixel values and tends to lose fine detail. Highly compressed JPG images have all kinds of nasty looking compression artefacts when you zoom in close.

Oh yeah, I know exactly what you mean.....

hehe Lossless means when you take a image and compress the heck out of it. A uncompressed image might be a BMP or a Tiff or a any number of formats. JPG can be highly compressed or just a little bit. The more you compress it to make a smaller file size the more the colors and image blend. Think of it as a viewable ZIP file. A BUM file is a BMP uncompressed and can be pretty big size wise. But converted to a jpg its pretty small but you pay a price for it in clarity. In poser you conver it to a jpg but come render time it has to uncompress it in order to use it and this takes up allot of resources as far as i can tell. UV mapper will tile a texture for you across the mesh. What exactly are you tring to texture ?

Oh, well, I was going to make a texture pack, thats all.... Thanks for the explanation on lossless. :)

Virum: Just look at some of the other texture packs. Theres tons of them in the free area here. Dont just look in Poser try all of them . Theres small ones and bigger size ones and they all work , it just depends upon what you are texturing. Jpg format is a good way to go and cuts down on download time.

'it is always a good idea to make it a power of 2' Would someone care to explain the reasoning behind this theory? I've heard this innumerable times, but never seen any facts to back it up, or justification for saying it. I'm not saying it's BS, just saying I don't know why this should be the case. Always happy to be enlightened. mac

My understanding is those special sizes are needed for game engines and don't really matter in 3D render/animation apps, unless the work in the 3D app is for a game.

I think it has something to do with ease of scaling (down) of the texture without too much interpolation and the fact that computers are binary systems. Powers of 2 are easily halved all the way down to the base (2) without ever encountering an odd number. BYS

In Photoshop certain filters, applied to an image that has a pixel size which is a multiple of 512, are naturally seamless. This is a good thing to remember, as it will save time and headaches while building texture tiles. JPGs are evil ... if you must use them because of size constraints, I suggest using Photoshop's save-to-web or Imageready, as they use different algorithms and compreess much smaller and cleaner than any other option. Poser4 does not tile textures unless the model has been UVmapped to do so. In Poser5 it is possible to use a tiling image as a shader compoenent

Hmmm.... Beatyoursoul's explanation does make some sense, although I'm not convinced that it's a critical factor. I suppose it probably helps a bit somewhere along the line. Lyrra, 'JPGs are evil' - Well, possibly so. They're also the only sensible alternative to downloading huge .bmps or .psds. I always use PS's 'save to web' for jpegs. It's definitely the best option available. Image Ready? Who? I uninstalled the danged thing. Waste of space, as far as I'm concerned. This whole jpeg/power of 2 thing is an issue for me since DAZ demand a template of every single figure or prop. The problem is, the packs I make tend to have lots of pieces, as opposed to one single figure. The current one will have over 100 pieces when it's finished, so making templates and textures becomes a seriously major factor in file size. That's why I want to get my head well round this stuff before I map everything. mac

Once again, Renderosity eats a long post... :( I must remember to select all and copy before I Post Reply. Here's the synopsis: The thing about JPGs is balance, balance between filesize and quality. Personally, high quality JPGs retain good information while still being smaller in size than BMPs and TIFs. It'd be great if templates could be saved in vector format instead of bitmapped image. The only real solution is to use gray-scale (as B&W doesn't show up very well when zoomed out) and JPG high-quality. That should keep the filesizes somewhat restrained. BYS