If an object is shaded using an Hypershade shading network that uses a texture file (via a node such as the File 2D texture node), 3Delight for Maya will first convert the texture to 3Delight’s texture file*, and then use this converted file for rendering. It is possible to prepare the texture file manually in order to avoid this automatic conversion completely by using the tdlmake utility. The prepared texture file should have the ‘
.tdl
’
extension. It can then be used directly in an Hypershade node such as the File 2D texture node.
Important
It is recommended to use the ‘-preview’ option of tdlmake; doing so will create an embedded thumbnail that Maya can display as a texture preview image.
* Which is a standard TIFF file, augmented with mip maps.