I cross posted this with the marketplace wishlist forum. Just trying for additional exposure. Feel free to delete this if it doesn't belong here. :-)

I would really like to see someone create a texture set or sets for V4/4.2 of high resolution, no makeup, non-compressed textures.

I see so many really good textures that I would almost like to buy but 2 things stop me most of the time - too much ridiculous makeup and no non-makeup option, and the fact that the textures are always jpg.

I do alot of painting on my own. In fact, I have never found a texture set that I am completely happy with until I do my own thing to it.

The problem with that is, if you paint on a jpg file you have to save it as something like bmp, png, tiff or whatever, or else you get degradation due to additional compression. The more times you save a jpg as jpg, the more lossy it gets. Even saving it once from jpg to jpg shows noticeable loss of quality.

And then if I'm saving as bmp or even png, I'm ending up with files that are 12 MB when they could be 2 MB, if I could start with a png, PSD, BMP, TIF or whatever and then save it myself to jpg.

If there are any texture sets that already fit this description, please let me know. I have very little time to devote to idly searching and honestly, the search here really isn't very good anyway, IMO.

I'm looking for high quality face and body textures at very high resolution - at least 4K, in psd, png, bmp or tif formats. Textures with no makeup, that is.

I'm not quite sure if this will fit what you are looking for, but my last two models are at around 150 MB zipped. The files are in jpg but are taken from the original, work done to them, and then saved out as a jpg with max quality (12 in Photoshop). Of course there is going to be some loss, but I try to minimize them. They come with a no makeup option as well. The face file for Tessen, my last one, is 9.77 MB with the actual PSD (not included) that I used to make it sitting at around 1GB (many, many layers). Dimensions are 4000x4000. Here are the links to the pages:

Tessen:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=82176

Sai:
http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=81761

I try to leave bringing down file sizes to the customer as I know I would rather have full or near full quality and then decrease rather than the other way around. There are also closeups of the face both in the product pages and gallery. I know you were looking for different file types, but you might not have much luck in that department (at least I've never seen them offered outside of merchant resources). Anyways, good luck in your search and hope you find what you are looking for :)

Have a wonderful day,
pointblank

pointblank, those really do look excellent and I thank you for the reply and the links. :-)

It's been my experience though that saving what starts as a jpg out as jpg always results in unacceptable loss, regardless of how good the texture was to begin with.

Now if you start out with a bmp for example, and then save it as a maximum quality jpg, the file compression will be great and the texture loss will be virtually unnoticeable. However, if you save out that jpg you just made as another jpg, even at maximum there will be noticeable degradation.

So I really do want to find some high quality textures in bmp, png, psd or whatever other no-loss format. I have texture folders that are exceeding 500  MBs because I'm saving all my texture edits out as png to avoid the degradation, and those files are 8,12,15 MBs each, when they could be a fraction of that if I didn't have to use png.

It's also worth mentioning that a 15 MB texture file will use far more GPU  memory as well as far more RAM when rendering than a jpg of the same texture.

Just a bland question: what sort of system and which renderer are you throwing these massive files at? Can Poser really take advantage of that level of detail?
I mean, when you consider how much painting (clone/smudge/pixelate/other CSx artifice) is done to a texture when creating it from resource kit, and considering the fact that the final products all seem to have burnt-in specular that are going to be a bit wonky with scene lights as well as other issues... just can't see the justification for such high-resolution images.

Hence, you have your dilemma Schecterman, as the file size limits here at Renderosity are at a hard 150MB for downloads, and most places I've seen have similar limitations, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who uses those formats (to my knowledge). Content Paradise has the highest limits that I've found at 750MB for file sizes. As to your last point, the memory and GPU usage will defer based on the complexity of the image (eg. if there is transparencies). Another reason for this is that having one picture as a jpg and the same picture as a png will normally result in a large difference in file size. Especially with texture files which require many details, you wouldn't possibly be able to have the same file size for the same image across the formats (again to my knowledge). If I'm wrong do please let me know as you have now piqued my interest in this. Going through school for game design, we were all taught to use the lowest possible denominator as memory usage/allocation/budgeting is critical in games. I'm still learning as far as actual 3D goes outside of games (typically low poly, low to high resolution textures) and am always happy to learn more.

I will try to look out for something for you, but good luck either way in your search.

I don't automatically see noticeable degradation when saving as JPEG.

Question: In Photoshop, are you literally doing "Save As" and then choosing JPEG? Because for historical reasons (that make no sense to me) that method calls on an inferior JPEG encoder - a buggy one IMO.

On the other hand, if you use "Save for Web", and then choose JPEG, you are using a completely different implementation. This one produces very clean images.

As far as textures go, I do not automatically see noticeable degradation through jpg either. I can imagine on some things, there will be noticeable losses, but in my experience with textures, I have never seen this. Then again, as I said, I open the original jpg and then move it into a psd to do work on it so I'm not saving it many times over as a jpg.

Well I see the loss when I paint on a jpg and then save it back out as a jpg. Colors lose intensity and you can get some minor pixellation.
I'm talking close-ups though, where it's more noticeable.

To answer the question from RobynsVeil I have a quad core oc'd to 3.1 ghz, Win7x64 and 8 Gb RAM. I'm trying NOT to throw the massive texture files at it though, that's the whole point, that I want to use my own jpg's but from files that start out as non-jpg's.

I do understand that most textures undergo alot of editing prior to being released, but that was also part of my main point - I'm looking for the exception to the rule, the highest quality stuff available that hasn't been edited to death already. ;-)

I'm using Modo and Mudbox to paint and to save out the files, not PS. I don't do much painting in PS, maybe a little texture editing here and there, and I use it for working on final image editing, but that's about it. Maybe I should look into PS's jpg export for textures and see if that's better than Modo or Mudbox's.

A jpg image saved at max quality should not lose any quality because its meant to be a losless compression. There are some merchchant resource skins that might be what you want. They must be altered if used for another product.

The save for web in Photoshop does seem to produce smaller images for the same quality settings. I have often wondered if its restricting the color range though.

Quote - because its meant to be a losless compression

Huh? Double huh?

JPEG is, by definition, lossy at any quality.

The fundamental mechanism it uses is to throw away information that isn't really needed in order for a human to perceive the compressed picture as being largely the same as the original. The quality adjuster simply determines how much info to discard - but it never keeps all of it.

Most of the JPEG compressors (but not all) don't even sample chrominance at every pixel - they store it in 2 by 2 averages, even at "100%" quality.

I guess hand-painting texture sets to release them for V4 is a silly idea then? I'd hate to find out I've been wasting my time. Tell me someone would appreciate my work, and be able to get it. I've been hammering out the kinks for a month or so now.

Eventually I'll release a complete set of my "character builder". Color maps, bump maps, specular control maps, displacement controllers for features, etc. Just tell me you wouldn't turn away from it just because it's a jpg. If you have to edit my skin, I didn't do it right the first time. I use a modular approach to my textures. when I want to add something to a character, I just add it IN poser. My skin map looks rather plain, so it's small. My tattoos are just tattoos so they are also small. The "beauty mark" I put on my character is a separate image, so it's really tiny.

Sorry about the rant, I just get very fired up when people talk about "high-res" textures.  Every time I get my hands on a so-called high-res texture, I wind up editing the dogsnot out of it. So now I have ONE that I modify in poser. I'm deleting all the ones I've collected over the years.

Quote - I guess hand-painting texture sets to release them for V4 is a silly idea then? I'd hate to find out I've been wasting my time. Tell me someone would appreciate my work, and be able to get it. I've been hammering out the kinks for a month or so now.

Eventually I'll release a complete set of my "character builder". Color maps, bump maps, specular control maps, displacement controllers for features, etc. Just tell me you wouldn't turn away from it just because it's a jpg. If you have to edit my skin, I didn't do it right the first time. I use a modular approach to my textures. when I want to add something to a character, I just add it IN poser. My skin map looks rather plain, so it's small. My tattoos are just tattoos so they are also small. The "beauty mark" I put on my character is a separate image, so it's really tiny.

Sorry about the rant, I just get very fired up when people talk about "high-res" textures.  Every time I get my hands on a so-called high-res texture, I wind up editing the dogsnot out of it. So now I have ONE that I modify in poser. I'm deleting all the ones I've collected over the years.

You're missing the point, I think.
It's not a question of whether or not something is good or even great, it's the fact that I want what I want and I don't just buy other peopel's stuff when I can make almost everything I need by myself.

Except for human textures, that is. (Well, human models too)
I've bought some high quality human textures, but I don't have the patience to Photoshop them onto a UV map. I've done it partially, but it just bores me to death.
On the other hand, I LOVE to paint in 3D, and I just want some high quality, non-compressed pre-mapped textures as a base.

So yeah, I would edit your skin, but not becasue it wasn't good, but because it wouldn't be unique unless I did. And I wouldn't enjoy using it as much, because to me, buying a texture package is just the first step towards creating a new character. I never just apply and render and call it done.

I wasn't intending to come across as hostile towards the texture merchants here, just hoping someone had what I was looking for. ;-)

Quote - I don't automatically see noticeable degradation when saving as JPEG.

Question: In Photoshop, are you literally doing "Save As" and then choosing JPEG? Because for historical reasons (that make no sense to me) that method calls on an inferior JPEG encoder - a buggy one IMO.

On the other hand, if you use "Save for Web", and then choose JPEG, you are using a completely different implementation. This one produces very clean images.

Oh! I didn't realise that! Good to know - thanks, BB.

The Elite textures from DAZ are about as good as you'll get, they have a state of the art body scanner for capturing the skin detail at incredibly high res. Unfortunately the resources are then shoved into 4000x4000 textures by the venders, which makes them as low res as the rest.

Quote - The Elite textures from DAZ are about as good as you'll get, they have a state of the art body scanner for capturing the skin detail at incredibly high res. Unfortunately the resources are then shoved into 4000x4000 textures by the venders, which makes them as low res as the rest.

So are you saying that DAZ  provides the vendors with these textures and then the vendors go and map them?

I would think by now there would be at least ONE person out of all  these hundreds of thousands of Poser merchants who would want to make some texture sets for people wanting high resolution.

Or does DAZ tell them they have to stick to a certain resolution standard? I've noticed that all texture sets I have are in non powers of two, like 4000x4000 or 3000x3000, while the industry standard is to use powers of two, since that's how a graphics card deals with a texture - 1024, 2048, 4096, etc.

Actually, the elite textures are at 4096x4096 which is actually in powers of 8. The reason you see many doing them at even numbers such as 3000x3000 or 4000x4000 is, I believe, the way Poser handles the texture compression. At 4096, you will see seams in the preview but not in the render (if I remember correctly).  

Huh?

"actually" powers of 8?

As in, not really a power of 2? I differ.

4096 is a power of 2, 4, 8, 16, and 64. Which one is the important one?

3000 or 4000 is not chosen because it works better with texture compression, if by that you mean MIP mapping - quite the opposite. MIP stands for the Latin "multum in parvo", i.e. much in a small space. When a texture is MIP mapped, multiple reduced resolutions are pre-calculated by dividing the resolution in half repeatedly. So the "most" even or best size is one that results in a perfect division by 2 repeatedly all the way down to 1 pixel.

Which means that the best size is precisely a power of 2.  If it happens to also be a power of something else, such as 4, 8, 16, 32, etc, that is because the power of 2 is not prime and can be decomposed, not because it is actually better.

4096 is 2 ^ 12. This can also be written as, for example, 2 ^ (4 * 3), which is (2^4) ^ 3, which is 16 ^ 3. It is also 2 ^ (6 * 2), AKA (2^6) ^2, AKA 64 ^2.

The size 2048 is 2 ^ 11. This cannot be decomposed, because 11 is prime, and so it is not also a power of 4 or 8. But it is a great size for MIP mapping a texture.

4096->2048->1024->512->256->128->64->32->16->8->4->2->1
4000->2000->1000->500->250->125->uhoh

However, all is not lost. In reality, the 4000 pixel texture is first extended to 4096 with black or junk. Then the MIP mapping is applied. However, this can lead to seams when using a tiled texture.

But we're talking about skin textures, where seams have nothing to do with what is at the edge of the texture image. It has to do with whether or not the person making the texture understands how MIP mapping averages pixels in a neighborhood, and then whether or not they did the right thing, which is to extend the "pelt" of skin past what is actually used to include more pixels all around it.

I've long understood what causes the visible seams, which is something I learned when baking textures to a UV map with other software, that you have to extend past the seams slightly.

But why exactly do Poser texture makers use 4000x4000 for example, while the whole rest of the CG industry uses 4096, 2048, and so on up or down the line?

Hmm... I stand corrected, though I'm not sure where I picked up the power of 8. Maybe RAM? shrug So many things crammed in my head in a short amount of time through school... Thank you for correcting this and explaining things a little better :)

Quote - I've long understood what causes the visible seams, which is something I learned when baking textures to a UV map with other software, that you have to extend past the seams slightly.

But why exactly do Poser texture makers use 4000x4000 for example, while the whole rest of the CG industry uses 4096, 2048, and so on up or down the line?

 
Okay, I did some searching and found this: Actually Poser content seems to prefer 4000x4000 maps. This is because Poser version 6 for Mac can only go up to 4000x4000. Other versions can do 4096, so to stay compatible with more versions, content makers use 4000.

Bagginsbill would probably know if this isn't the case though.

Hi,
isn't the quality loss due to UV-mapping (and implied distortion) much bigger than the loss by JPG compression for quality >= 95% (gimp measures in percent)?

Best regards,
    Michael
 

Quote - I've long understood what causes the visible seams, which is something I learned when baking textures to a UV map with other software, that you have to extend past the seams slightly.

Well, I didn't. Thanks for the detailed explanation, Bagginsbill.

Quote -
 
Okay, I did some searching and found this: Actually Poser content seems to prefer 4000x4000 maps. This is because Poser version 6 for Mac can only go up to 4000x4000. Other versions can do 4096, so to stay compatible with more versions, content makers use 4000.

Bagginsbill would probably know if this isn't the case though.

Ahh well thanks for the explanation. Sounds plausible.

@Michael314:
There is no "implied distortion" if the UV  map doesn't have distortion to begin with. If your UV  map's vertex points are as close to the relative proportions of the mesh's vertex points, there will be no distortion in the texture when applied.
However, not all texture makers are created equal and can cause texture distortion all on their own in Photoshop by stretching or sizing parts of a photo too much when trying to make it fit over the UV map. Some people are better at it than others, and the UV  map can only use what it's been given, for better or for worse.
Another thing that can cause distortion is a texture maker failing to consider the natural stretching that will occur on the mesh due to mesh topology. They have to realize that they're looking at a 2D representation of a 3D model and adjust their texturing methods accordingly. You also have to take into account body parts that are going to be morphed or moved that will cause the texture to move along with them, and plan ahead for that as much as possible.

This is why you see so many Poser textures that are really good and so many that are just plain bad.

Quote - So are you saying that DAZ  provides the vendors with these textures and then the vendors go and map them? I would think by now there would be at least ONE person out of all  these hundreds of thousands of Poser merchants who would want to make some texture sets for people wanting high resolution.

Or does DAZ tell them they have to stick to a certain resolution standard? I've noticed that all texture sets I have are in non powers of two, like 4000x4000 or 3000x3000, while the industry standard is to use powers of two, since that's how a graphics card deals with a texture - 1024, 2048, 4096, etc.

You can thank older version of Posers texture limit for this, they were limited to 4096^2, yet since P7 that limit has been increased, but the venders still insist on catering for the older versions, and every DS user has cursed them for it, as DS can use whatever your computer can cope with.

Bugger, now I have to re-figure all the bloody math for making my skin. At least it'll turn out for the better, but man what a load of work. 18 material zones on V4, on only 7 or so maps, each one with a different ratio. wanders off muttering aspect ratio math

BUGGER!!

Before you do any resizing, I think you should test assumptions. When the CG lore tells us something, it sometimes doesn't apply. It all depends on how the app behaves.

I am certain that Poser 6 does this differently than 7. And 7 may do it differently than 8.

An honest comparison of a facial closeup at very large render dimensions (> 2K pixels) may show that 4000 versus 4096 is no different in results or performance. I think it isn't.

Off topic - I'm suddenly presented with a new forum text editor here and I'm noticing that it is editing in a different font which is hard for me read and not the one that actually displays.

Also, paragraphs are now showing with way too much space even though I have only one newline between them.

Anybody else seeing this?

and Right Click in firefox is working perfectly at long last.

I think they just upgraded!

Just noticed this in another response.  You're not the only one, BB.

yeh

and spelchkr dyed to.

so it's mac's fault for the "nonstandard" 4000x4000 huh?

o mac you rascal.