Creating texture map. What is the best dimension

[Terry]

I notice in the standard texture library, the texture maps vary in dimension. Some are 600x600 and others are much larger. Why would that be? Is there an optimal size? I want to create my own but want to understand the proper sizing.
Thanks
Terry

[Despot]

The larger the better really, especially when the camera is really close to a texture.  If the resolution is not sufficient, pixellation and/or blurring of some degree will occur.

Look at the attached images, the first one uses a 600 x 600 texture map, the second uses a 1600 x 1600 texture map, you can quite clearly see blurring in the first image especially around the the white rectangular stroke lines - it is not occuring in the second image because the resolution is high enough to cope

Also its worth noting that if you are going to tile textures on your model ensure that the maps you use are seamless.

Hope this helps somewhat

J

[timb]

Does the model size change anything?  Say you scale the model down by a 1/3, would the 600 x 600 map look any better?

[guest84672]

This makes no difference since KeyShot is not scaling the model.

[CAClark]

The thing I always look at is how much of the rendered image is going to be occupied by a textured area, and then look at what resolution I'm going to render at. If my render for example is going to be 1080P (1920x1080), then I'm pretty safe to assume that I can make any texture 2048 on the widest side, and I'm unlikely to encounter a problem. If the render was going to be 5k wide, then you have to look to a higher texture resolution. You do need to be careful though, as a cylindrical UV could still trip you up. It's all about the visible size of texture in the render.

On a side note, Lightwave is optimised for textures conforming to the standard power of two scaling. So it's more efficient in memory if a texture is 2048x1024 than 2000x1000. Does Keyshot benefit from specific conventions like that at all?

Cheers!

[Terry]

Thanks Metal Master...exactly what I wanted to know.

[Dylan]

CAClark is right, it's all about how big or small the texture will be in the final render. I tend to save my textures in several sizes, 4096x4096, 2048x2048 and 1024x1024. The smaller one I use on objects that will be in the distance in a scene, and even at that I could probably get away with 512x512.