Decal textures dont seem to be affected by viewport texture resolution?

[Jpjapers]

Ive increased the viewport texture resolution for a file im working on but regardless of the resolution decals dont seem to improve. I dont know if this is to do with the way max compresses large bitmaps or the way decals are implemented but its slightly annoying.

[Frood]

Hi,

I'm pretty sure those decals use CoronaBitmap. Be aware of the fact that CoronaBitmap uses the "Baked Prodcedural Maps" setting of the viewport configuration. Either change that value, or use standard bitmap - both options should work properly.


Good Luck

[romullus]

I'm sure Frood also wanted to mention, but forgot, that if you increase baked procedural maps resolution substantially, you may face severe lag in slate material editor, so be aware of that fact too, as this is something that cost me quite a lot of nerves before i was able to find what's the issue.

[Jpjapers]

I increased them all to 4096 and saw no change.
It could be because the source texture is 16k anyway.

[Tom]

Thanks @romullus for pointing that.
I used to have 'Baked Procedural Maps' resolution set to 8096, 'Texture Maps' and 'Viewport Background/ Environment' resolution set to 4096. I changed these values to 1024 and 2048 respectively and the SME seems way more responsive now: when I double click on a texture or a material, the Material Parameter Editor refreshes much quicker.

[Frood]

Hi,

I could write quite a few lines bashing CoronaBitmap due to various issues (which are all logged). The dependency on the "Baked Procedural Maps" setting is just one of them. I currently even consider to use a script to automatically convert to standard bitmap whenever a scene is loaded. Only the out of core feature could be a reason to use it (and - the display quality in the viewport is slightly better with highres bitmaps, yes :).


Good Luck

[Tom]

I've been told to always use CoronaBitmap instead of standard bitmaps as it speeds up the rendering, but I never took the time to check this. This is the reason why I always use CoronaBitmaps in my scenes.

What is the 'out of core feature'?

[Avi]

@Tom, you can read about Out of Core Rendering feature here: https://support.chaos.com/hc/en-us/articles/9477508142993-Out-of-core-Rendering-for-textures-3ds-Max