Chaos Corona for 3ds Max > [Max] General Discussion

TX image format?

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Tom:
Hi,

I recently used a Chaos Cosmos asset in one of my scene and, after I put the material in the SME, I saw all textures used in the proxy model were .TX files.

I never used this format so far and I was wondering what are the advantages of using them?
Also, I tried to open such images in PS and it doesn't work so I was wondering how to create them?

I stumbled upon these articles:
https://www.autodesk.com/support/technical/article/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/How-to-convert-bitmap-textures-to-TX-format-for-rendering-with-Arnold-in-3ds-Max.html

and

https://help.autodesk.com/view/ARNOL/ENU/?guid=arnold_for_3ds_max_arnold_3dsmax_html#Textures-ManuallyGenerate.txTextures

which tend to let me think .TX files are more a Arnold thing, so why are they being used by my Cosmos proxy model?

Sorry for my newbie question, but it's a bit confusing.

Thanks in advance for your help guys,

James Vella:
Vray also uses .tx files for the built-in library, so I would assume all Choas assets are either already in tx or will be.

The reason they use this format is the benefit of mip-mapping and render speed. A few other benefits listed below, these 3 links you can read more ( Vray, Open as Tiff ,Mip-Mapping ) but this is the TLDR;
- they are intended to increase rendering speed
- reduce aliasing artifacts
- files require less memory
- high-resolution mipmap image is used for high-density samples, such as for objects close to the camera
- lower-resolution images are used as the object appears farther away
- improve image quality by reducing aliasing and Moiré patterns that occur at large viewing distances

You can also open .tx files as TIFF to edit in photoshop and save as something else, Its not recommend to overwrite the file as you lose all the mip-mapping and optimizations. You have to use the maketx batch script for the time being. Would be nice is there was a simpler way but thats about all I know on the topic.

Tom:
Thanks James,

Do you use such texture files yourself?

Unless it really increase rendering speed & quality I more see this as a waste of time as you first have to convert your regular jpg, tiff ... textures in tx before you can use them so it adds one more step in the workflow.

James Vella:
No I don't, I would if it was an automatic function in substance/photoshop/3D or could be easily read/edit by native file viewers. 

Currently I don't have any reason to over complicate my workflow so for the time being I wont be authoring .tx files. I'll keep my eye on it but for now I tend to agree with you. I would be interested to know from the Corona devs their thoughts on this.

mraw:
Interesting to read that Chaos use tx-files as well. I thought tx-files were in Arnold-thing. In Arnold it is automated. There is a tool for converting textures to tx-files, but I believe most people use the checkbox 'auto-convert textures to tx'. In some cases you want to alter the mip-map-bias to get the texture sharper, but usually I don't care about the rx-files at all.

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