V9 Texture Filter Shader

[Thomo]

Hi,

I am using the new texture filter shader quite a bit and I am wondering if this has a significant impact on render times.

Currently I am doing some architectural camera animations and have read some previous posts regarding the memory / render time hit that is incurred using shaders.

Would I be better of editing my texture maps in Photoshop and avoiding texture filter?

Texture filter is a great addition to EIAS, particularly in my case for work flow.

Thanks for any input.

Greg

[Buggsy]

Hi Greg,

I have used shaders quiet a lot and the rendering penalty can be high. I can't remember off the top of my head but it can sometimes double the time and you also have to use higher sampling levels when animating. If it's just still work, I think shaders are great, but from a planning perspective, if your going to animate, avoid the shaders...kind of.

If I want to use a shader, if it's say a floor, I do a high resolution snapshot of if from the 'top' camera view port, edit it in photoshop and then apply it as texture map.

Or alternatively hunt down free texture maps on-line and use them.

I'm not using v9, at the moment, so I can't answer your question specifically related to the shader you're talking about. Hope this helps though.

Michael

[Thomo]

Thanks Michael,

It was actually your discussions relating to animated walkthroughs that triggered my question.

The texture filter shader is a great way to "edit" textures on the fly and since we are working in a 2.2 gamma linear work flow

it is very useful to "strip" the gamma from the textures rather than having a separate, second set of textures.

I'll keep experimenting on render time hits and post some results later.

Thanks again,

Greg