Texture File Format
For 3Delight for Maya to render efficiently with texture maps, texture file must be prepared and saved in a certain format. That format is a standard TIFF file augmented with mipmaps. This preparation can be either automatic or done manually.
Although the 3Delight texture format is standard TIFF augmented with mipmaps, some applications are not able to read it properly because the data is stored in tiles and not scanlines (this is a performance feature).
Automatic Preparation through the Hypershade shading network
If an object is shaded using an Hypershade shading network that uses a texture file (any image file format via a node such as the File 2D texture node), 3Delight for Maya will automatically convert the texture to 3Delight’s efficient texture file format and then use this file for rendering.
The automatic conversion is not done if the file is already prepared. It is detected as already prepared in the following two situations:
- The file extension is:
.tdl - The file extension is:
.tdl.tif
It is possible to prepare the texture file manually (and save it using a file name with the above extension) in order to avoid this automatic conversion – which will inevitably slow down the rendering process.
Manual Preparation of Texture Files
3Delight for Maya comes with a command line tool named 'tdlmake' to prepare texture file for efficient rendering. The prepared texture file should be saved using a file name with the '.tdl' extension. You can also use the '.tdl.tif' extension instead if you want to keep the ability to open and view the texture using the tool of your choice (if it supports the TIFF image format with data stored in tiles). The prepared texture file can then be used directly in an Hypershade node such as the File 2D texture node. Refer to section "3.3 Using the Texture Optimizer - tdlmake" of the 3Delight Studio Pro Documentation for more details on the command line tool.
Important
Maya can not read TIFF file stored in tiles, only in scanlines. For this reason, it is necessary to use 'tdlmake' with the '-preview' option so it will also insert an embedded thumbnail (stored in scanlines) at the begining of the file that Maya can read. This is useful for Maya to display a texture preview image.