Textures
FurryBall provides hardware acceleration only for 2D file textures and in some cases 2D layered textures directly. All other 2D procedural textures (for example checker, fractal etc.) are supported starting from FurryBall 3, too, but these textures must first be computed (flattened) by Maya and after that used by FurryBall. Maya needs some time for this computation and it depends on texture resolution. FurryBall must compute recommended resolution of each texture. See subsection Special Attributes below for more information. Also see Materials, Lights and Hair Node sections for information about what attributes can be connected to textures. File textures and 2D procedural textures can generally be connected to ALL texture attributes supported by FurryBall.
To render scene with textures, the Textures feature has to be enabled in currently active render node (see Render Settings Node section).
To render scene also with 2D procedural textures Procedural Textures enabled, this feature has to be enabled in currently active render node (see Render Settings Node section). See Tutorial 10: Procedural Textures for more info on general procedural textures.
These image file formats are supported when loading file textures:
Image sequence can be used. Also Gain and Offset parameters in Color Balance section are fully supported.
File names for image sequence must be in specific format: name.number.ext, where name is any text (or nothing), number must be in format with same number of digits (for example: 0000 - 1890, or 00-78, ...) and ext is files extension. Important are dots before ext and number!
Cache
When file texture is loaded, it is converted to a DDS data format (if not already in DDS), compressed (if compression is enabled), pre-filtered and saved to a temporary cache directory (see Quick Start - Installing section). If a texture with the same name and path is about to be loaded anytime on the same system, FurryBall always checks its cache and uses cached version if any to minimize loading/processing time. If the original texture is modified FurryBall, detects it and creates a new cache entry.
It is recommended to use DDS file format when rendering with FurryBall, images can be converted to DDS using Adobe Photoshop with NVIDIA Photoshop plugin. It is possible to choose data format, filter type for prefiltering and other DDS parameters using the Photoshop plugin. This can save some processing time because FurryBall uses DDS image file format internally.
Memory Usage
Textures are loaded (or generated) once they are needed and kept in GPU memory until a new scene is opened or Maya is closed. Textures usually need huge amounts of memory compared to geometry and it can be useful to release them when not needed if video/system memory is limited. To release textures use Clear Textures button in render node (see Render Settings Node section).
Special Attributes
There is no settings node for textures, special attributes are part of Maya file texture node. You'll find them at the bottom of the Attribute Editor for Maya file textures, under Extra Attributes.
Procedural Tex Default Res
As mentioned above, FurryBall computes recommended resolution for all procedural textures. If FurryBall can't compute this resolution (for example for light color texture, all textures for objects rendered only in mirror etc.) then it will use this default resolution for the affected texture.
Procedural Tex Max Res
If an object is very tessellated or very close to camera, then resolution for the affected texture might be very high. For these cases FurryBall clamps resolution to the value of this attribute.
Reduce Textures in Cuda
Because there has to be load EACH texture in DX and CUDA memory separately, we have to save memory.
So all textures in CUDA are using ONLY 512x512 by default. It is enough for most cases (blurred mirrors, indirect etc...) but if you need higher resolution of texture, you have to set this off.
Online Update
This is only useful when 3D painting using Maya 3D Paint Tool, it is sometimes necessary to enable this parameter to see texture update immediately when painting on object. Keep this enabled only when 3D painting and disable when done as it forces FurryBall to reload the texture every frame. 3D painting with FurryBall is still an experimental feature.
Compress Color
FurryBall uses compression (BC3) for color textures (bumps are always uncompressed) by default. The compression method is lossy. If blocky artefacts are visible it is possible to disable compression of the texture here. Note that DDS textures use data format they were saved with and this parameter has no affect on them. Also note that the compression format is not suitable for textures with alpha channel, if the texture is to be used as a transparency map using alpha channel, it is highly recommended you disable the compression.
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