Higher quailty in editor? (Maya)

[KevinJW]

Someone pointed out to me that the quality of the textures seem very low. And then I compaired the texture quality in the editor, and the rendered picture. And the texture quality is higher in the editor. And I don't know why it's doing this because I have the render quality set to the highest it can go.

[Black]

Well KevinJW;

Seems that we meet again. Si you've got yourself a personal MaYA tutor :)

Lol thats what the forum is set here for. Don't mind me. I JUST got in and still have the chills from outside on me.


Now; to what you are asking... there can be two reasons that come to mind from the top of my head.
The first one is the never ending Jpeg issue. As cool as they are in compressing. they tend to compress an image with some los by blending the neighbor values to each other. Thus leaving no such thing as a sharp colour.
When MaYA interprates this image it rounds things up in the render engine. So your texture gets ever blurry.

Since I don't know your texture format, I can't place this option out yet. As it is an issue.

The other possible situation to watch out for is.. that if your image is JUST able to handle the details you are looking out for, it is most probably going to be blurry in the render.
That is a definately to happen situation.
The reason is that by default MaYA Blurs any imported image file.
If the issue is not from the file being a Jpeg, try this;

Open the Hypershade window.
Find and select your texture file
Open the Attribute editor. and search for the 'Effects' options
Set the Filter setting to 0 or 0.1 or something.. but much lower than what it is now, since you don't like the resullt you are getting.(By default it should be at 1)
That said; let me point out a few things you had better watch out for when preparing textures outside of MaYA...
Always reffer to try and have the textures resolution a little bit bigger than you would actually have need for.Unless for gaming. Figuring the resolution for that is done with another cool trick)
MaYA tends to like digits that are a multiple of 64. It gives the best render results in such cases. Infact if it is the power of 2 thats even better!
If you can try to use .gif, *.tiff, *.Iff, *.Psd-filetexture(only MaYA6 and up), *.PNG or *.Tga formats if there are very sharp features that you don't want to loose. (Note.. You don't always be able to render a *.Tiff in MR though). *.Bmp slows your render down dearly but also gives preserves sharp edges. As for Jpeg.. I almost always work with Jpeg.. but I use an emmence file format.. all my textures are at 2K to 4K in size.. very rarely 1K (Incase some may not know.. 1K is 1024x1024 pixels)

Hope this helps

[KevinJW]

Hey, Yeah I was using a jpg. Ok, I found the effects option and changed the filter from 1.000 to 0.000. And from what I saw there was no change. I'm going to try to convert the JPG to a TGA and then render it again. I already made the texture a 3k .gif and there is still no noticeable change.

[KevinJW]

I rendered it with a 3k .TGA with the filter setting to 0. And it is still kinda smoothed out. It's a little better though.

[Black]

Kevin,

I am not in a very available time at this very moment.
After mdnight or even maybe tomorrow is the soonest I can delay with setting some screen shots for you.

But I think your mistake is you are selecting the atributes for the shader.. not the texture file. Try again.

You should see a filter option, a filter ofset option, an invert and a Color remap option there under effects.

Take a look again. if you don't get anywhere. Let me know. I'll post a screen shot of it all later on

[KevinJW]

I did what you said to the filter settings, set the one that was at 1 to 0 or 0.1.

I know what your talking about, but it doesn't seem to make a difference.

[KevinJW]

Set it like this, right?

[Black]

Yes thats the right place..

And if that doesn't work; there are few reasons that would be possible to guess without being in your chair.

Let me think it over... Not too available now.



Oh wait.. is it only a colour image? Or a Bump aswel?
Bumps have gilters on them aswel.


Other than that.. if you are not connecting to the colour channel. and instead to the defuse (Some still believe that Diffuse means the colour map) It is normal to happen while rendering.

[KevinJW]

The only thing it will let me chang it to are, None, Color, And combined textures. It wont let me use everything else.

[Black]

What are you talking about?

Really lost me

[KevinJW]

Sorry, I'm terrible explaining things.

Maya will only let me use these settings (The ones high lighted).
It wont let me use the diffuse setting you said to use.

[Black]

Lol...

I guess this time I wasn't good in explaining myself.

I meant the input graph for the material you are using!
I am presuming that you used it as for the colour input of the material. so thats why I asked if there is a bump map assighned there aswel or not.
Those that have a Max or Bryse background in texturing tend to do a mistake of assighing the texture map to Diffuse for some reason.
But unlike what is most thought. the diffuse settings are more about how much of the texture is to be applied where. So a render on diffuse instead would blur your result.

If you are saying that you increased the res, and turned of the filter for the image file.. and have it connected to the texture maps, and have nothing but the texture map on the material... I have really no idea why this could be happening software wise.
You may have to introduce your drivers to the rendering machine.

(I am saying all of this presuming that you have not been doing the render n the default 'Low quality' but in at least production quality)