This morning I finished 5 new Aztec character sets. With figures, props, and textures, the file package weighs in at 121 MB. All the major textures are 2048 x 2048 .tif. I prefer this format because it preserves the detail I put into the texture maps and is lossless. If I compress them to .jpg we lose quality in the map, but the file is smaller. Will you buy them if they are in the larger file .tif format, or should they be .jpg?

i avoid buying jpgs because i never know at what compression they have been saved, and i've gotten some really badly compressed ones. i definitely prefer tifs.

two words- dial-up..;) Tif's are pretty much professional-quality, and they're very good quality. I'd go for something that conveys the essence of what you're displaying. I guess it depends on what market you're going for; a lot of people even with broadband might balk at downloading something that large. Heck, I'd have to check, but I think the entire Daz Studio package comes in smaller than that..;)

Use JPG, but keep the quality high (or best even). Although JPG is lossy, at best quality, very little is lost. This will obviously depend upon the software used to convert (Photoshop or PaintShop are recommended), but good JPG compression at best quality will be indistinguishable except upon close inspection. The file size with the JPG compression is phenomenally smaller than using TIFs, even at best quality. If this was for a professional job or clients, TIF might be warranted. But for download and general sales, JPG is a much better bet.

This is an interesting topic.

Depending on the item and the texture, JPG's fine. Any loss, especially on larger dimesions, in not really noticible to the naked eye.

Besides, many people are sizing up their resource info anyway.

My motto is "Hi-rez blur is not better than lo-res sharp".

Basically crap at high res is just hi rez crap. Know what I mean?

IM the merchant and ask for a sample section of the texture(like a swatch) so you can tell.

Tiffs are a better format but I would not want a whole runtime of them. We got rid of that when Poser adopted JPG because it was a resource hog. Besides, with Anti-aliasing, it isn't usually an issue.

If you do print work, and these texture are the most drop tead realistic you have ever seen, then I would use tiff. But then again, you could just resave them as JPG.

The only file in Poser that really shouldn't be a jpg is a displacement map. Just my opinion. But I have tested it.

Message edited on: 03/31/2006 22:05

PS: I did a bunch of tests years ago but don;t have the samples any more....

Huge textures like 4000 by 4000 can be saved iut at a lower quality. There is just so much vast pixel information you don't loose anything noticible, especially if there is noise.

So larger the texture, the lower you can compress. The smaller the image, the higher you need to save out at. Under 2000 by 2000, don't go below a 9. Over 3000 by 3000, you can go as low as 7 on some textures without any difference.

Don't let anyone convice you that a flood-fill skirt texture needs to be 4000 by 4000 and saved out at a jpg level 12. Even geometry doesn't stand up under vast magnification unless the mesh is over 125,000 polys. That is just pixel spam.

If I find the charts I will post them

Message edited on: 03/31/2006 22:03

nod; those are good points (and yes, it is an interesting subject :). i wasn't thinking from a merchant's point of view, but only from my own -- i don't mind a runtime full of tifs because i weed my runtime judiciously, and throw out any texture i don't use because i don't care to save 35 different colours of the very same hair texture; the material room can take care of that. same with lip colours and all that makeup jazz; i toss most of those. i also know how much texture i need at what size -- if i am rendering an item that takes up 200 pixels onscreen, i sure as heck don't need a 4000x4000 texture.

i beg to differ just a smidgen with the idea that larger textures can safely be compressed at a lower quality. while that's mostly true, it also depends on how the texture will be used -- i want hi-res, hi-quality faces but i don't care that much about props -- i sometimes resample those down myself for memory reasons, or create a much smaller, well-tiling texture.

but i am probably not representative in that regard, and you'd be better off ignoring my preference for tifs. :) maybe you could advertise that you are willing to send tifs if somebody needs them for closeup work; some people do that and i appreciate it a lot. and please, if you sell jpgs, mention what compression level you have used.

At the moment I am rendering a test with .jpgs compressed at 10/100 (I use PaintShopPro9 -- the scale for compression is 1 to 100). I will post the results when this render is complete.

Message edited on: 03/31/2006 23:55

I have heard different people say that compression in various apps vary. Please keep us posted.

I thought until I saw these that the .tif would result in a noticeably better render but I agree now with pakled that for general use .jpg appears to be fine. I really prefer tifs for their purity and ability (for an artist) to rework, but for someone purchasing this ready-made they're good. What do you think?

Message edited on: 04/01/2006 00:45

They could actually be the opposite of what you labeled them and it would look the same to me. Compression shows up most in some transparencies I have seen with gradients. But the textures are less of an issue. Cool outfit btw.

I wouldn't tell the difference - but after sleepless night I'm half blind, so you may ignore my opinion :D Usually when saving in PSP at 1% compression, the difference is almost non visible when comparing the textures - and completely non visible when texture is rendered on the figure. Even 1% compression saves a whole lot of disc space and bandwith ;) And yes, the bigger map/ more "noisy" is, the more compressed it can be without compression artifacts, that's from my own texturing experience too. I'd go for selling the set with .jpg maps, with additional info on .tiff's available :)

It all depends. You will shurely have noticed that, at the same size in pixels, a jpg picture of a sky is much smaller than an intricate (say, fractal) pattern. Compression is ok when it comes to large surfaces with little change in colour, but is less ok for detailed stuff. Otoh: it depends on what and how you want to render. Detailed textures are needed for close-ups, but not for more general scenes in which the characters are at a distance. So maybe you could, if you want to sell here, create a jpg version with textures that are not too large in size, and add to your readme file that people who want the tifs can ask you for a download link? This is done quite regularly.

I think people forget that the renderer itself is doing a lot of interpolation of the image map and general rendering plays a part. Even a billion x billion image map is going to get interpolated on render. ;) There is interpolation, smoothing, and antialiasing that come into play. The most exquisite image map is no better than the renderer and render size in which it is used. And Anton makes a stellar point about mesh resolution as well. So, you can play to the highest end and produce uncompressed 32768x32768 images that no one wants to download because 3GB is just unbelievably unworth the effort. Or you can use the statistical information about render size and image map size and come to a compromise. Unless you are expecting pore-level renders, you should take both extremes and find an image map size and informational detail that will satisfy most conditions. The bell curve says that the guy rendering V3 from two miles away and the other one rendering the hair follicle on her left cheek (take that as you will) are on the extreme ends. Then, as many have pointed out, you have to take the detail of the image map into consideration when compressing. With JPG, the more compression, the 'blurrier' the details (as it works on a neighbor format). If you want higher details, use less compression. But a TIF/BMP is not much better (and I stress this) than a top quality JPG, but the storage/download requirements are worlds apart. What are you really gaining in 10x's the file size, but only 0.5% difference in quality?

muralist, Why not let the customer have the option of downloading the hi-res. tif files. You can include the .jpg files in the initial sale and then have a link to where they can download the .tif files. Just a thought!

'The only file in Poser that really shouldn't be a jpg is a displacement map. Just my opinion. But I have tested it' I have to disagree slightly with Anton on that one. It depends on the final use of the disp map. I've just finished a series of pizzas with displacement, and I compared the results using .jpgs, 8-bit tiffs (P6) and 16-bit tiffs (daz studio). The differences are barely visible even at extreme close-ups, but a 16-bit tiff is considerably larger than a jpg. I don't know that it's enough to justify me increasing a 40Mb pack to 70Mb. mac

That's a lot of bandwidth. I really think you are fine with jpg. I love the colors by the way. I didn't realize these were your own you were asking about. I misunderstood. I didn't mean to sound cold blooded. I hope I did offer useful info. Kudos for doing historical.

maclean,

You can use a jpg of course. I was just was saying if there was a map that shouldn't be a jpg, it would be the displacement rather than any others.

Poser does different things with displacement depending on the light set you use. Jpgs just can give more artifacts with AO and IBL shadows. How many maps do you have that it would be 30 more megs zipped?

Message edited on: 04/01/2006 03:37

I created a new Runtime with all 5 figures and the geometry, texture, etc. for my market package. With .tif the Runtime was ~ 121 MB. After compressing the textures at 10% it is 36.3 MB, and zipped (Maximum Portable) it drops to 25.4 MB.

Message edited on: 04/01/2006 04:02

Anton, I've got 5 pizza maps (1024x) and 3 others. At 16-bit, they're around 6Mb each. If I use 8-bit for the P6 version, they're smaller, of course. I've also been using a small amount of displacement on the walls and wooden beams, but the original texs are 2048x, so instead of converting them, I tried the original texs. For most scenes, these actually look fine, although I'm still doing tests on that. I haven't had time to try it yet, but I seem to remember that there's a P6 node to convert RGB to grayscale, and I wanted to see if that made a difference. I'm already using a Color_Math node to set the zero disp value to RGB 128/128/128. I'll need to do a few more tests before I decide on the final format. mac

I think I understand. Is it like a Pizza Parlor? Sounds fun regardless.

Your guess isn't a million miles away, although there's a bit more to it than that. I can't say more until it's been submitted/accepted, but switching geom plays a major part in it. mac

The HSV node will convert things into B/W

So many to do things. Looks great btw. I would already try to do it is as few nodes as possible. With the Hue/Saturation/Value Node you are left with just 2 nodes. Also you can increase the numeric amount for strength. You could also plug your map into Specular Value and Specular Color to make it look hot and greasy. Ham and Mushroom huh? Now Ham and Pineapple!!!! :)

How many polys is the pizza -- can you post a wire?

Just thought I'd add my 2c worth. JPEG's are fine. Some people however my want to modify the texture and re-save to the same file and again and again. This is where things get really lossy. If a JPEG is modified, a new file needs to be made. I use BMP's myself until I'm happy, then save to high quality JPEG. Yummy pizza by the way, nice work.

I tried the HSV node, but I'm not getting the same results. It's very low contrast. The polycount is 1280 (an obj file of 135kb). Re saving, I work with .psd and do the final save using photoshop's Save for Web function, always at maximum quality. As anton pointed out earlier on, better a medium size, high-quality save than a large size at crap quality. People modifying texs and resaving them is a problem, but not one that content creators can do anything about, short of distributing all texs in a lossless format. And the 1% that would benefit from that would be outnumbered by the other 99% complaining about huge downloads. mac

Try increasing the value.

Thanks, anton. That's what I did and it's working fine now. mac