Tag Archives: maketx

Using oiiotool and maketx to create a mipmap debug texture

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To visualize the different mipmap levels, you can create a custom tx file with different textures for each mipmap level. It’s pretty easy to do with maketx. (or you can download this one)

First, to create the different mipmap levels, I use oiiotool (I use the one shipped with HtoA).

oiiotool --pattern checker:width=32:height=32:color1=1,0,1 8192x8192 3 -o 8192.tif
oiiotool --pattern checker:width=32:height=32:color1=1,0,1 8192x8192 3 -o 8192.tif
oiiotool --pattern checker:width=32:height=32:color1=1,0,0 4096x4096 3 -o 4096.tif
oiiotool --pattern checker:width=32:height=32:color1=1,.25,0 2048x2048 3 -o 2048.tif
oiiotool --pattern checker:width=32:height=32:color1=0,0,1 1024x1024 3 -o 1024.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=1,1,0 512x512 3 -o 512.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=0,1,1 256x256 3 -o 256.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=.5,0,0 128x128 3 -o 128.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=.5,.5,0 64x64 3 -o 64.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=0,1,0 32x32 3 -o 32.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=.5,0,.5 16x16 3 -o 16.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=.82,.41,.12 8x8 3 -o 8.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=0,.5,.5 4x4 3 -o 4.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=0,.75,1 2x2 3 -o 2.tif
oiiotool --pattern constant:color=.5,.5,.5 1x1 3 -o 1.tif

You can’t use constant colors for all the levels, because OIIO will optimize your texture into a constant color and there won’t be any texture access.

Then I use the -mipimage flag to combine all the mipmap levels into a tx file:

maketx 8192.tif ^
-mipimage 4096.tif ^
-mipimage 2048.tif ^
-mipimage 1024.tif ^
-mipimage 512.tif ^
-mipimage 256.tif ^
-mipimage 128.tif ^
-mipimage 64.tif ^
-mipimage 32.tif ^
-mipimage 16.tif ^
-mipimage 8.tif ^
-mipimage 4.tif ^
-mipimage 2.tif ^
-mipimage 1.tif ^
-format exr -d half -o debug.tx

Here’s a couple of examples of using mip-map bias with the debug tx file.

Mip-map Bias = -1 (read a higher resolution mipmap)

mipmap-bias-1

Mip-map Bias = 2 (read two-levels lower resolution mipmap)

mipmap-bias

 

[Arnold] Do the right thing: use tx

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Use tx textures. Don’t use png, jpg, tif, psd, or any other format. Convert them to tx.

Why not use those other formats?

  • Slow to load
  • Memory hungry if not tiled and mipmapped
  • Slow to render if textures exceed the texture cache size

Why use tx?

  • Fast to load
  • Efficient memory usage
  • Faster to render because they make better use of the texture cache
  • Optimizations such as the detection of constant colors and duplicate files

 

 

Convert texture maps to .tx

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When you’re rendering with Arnold, convert your texture maps to .tx files with maketx. Always 🙂

.tx textures are better because they are:

  • Tiled (usually the tiles are 64×64 pixels).

    Arnold loads one tile at a time, as needed, rather than loading the entire texture map in memory. So textures are loaded faster, because Arnold loads only what it needs to render the image.

    Arnold uses a texture cache system to efficiently manage texture memory usage: only the most recently used tiles are kept in memory. You can have hundreds, or even thousands, of 4k and 8k images, and Arnold will never use more runtime memory than the user-specified max cache size.

  • Mip-mapped.

    Mip-mapped textures are anti-aliased, even at low AA sample settings.

If you don’t convert your texture maps with maketx, the default Arnold behavior is to auto-tile and auto-map your textures for you, but this is very inefficient because it is done once for every rendered frame, rather than one-time-only with maketx.