Advanced Member stusutcliffe Posted October 26, 2012 Advanced Member Report Share Posted October 26, 2012 Ive just been looking at my exported maps. I have 6 TGA files at 2k each this comes to about 100 mbs!! I use these just because they seem to be the default choice when you export your OBJ.What do you guys use as a preference.Surely JPEG or PNG would be more economical for file sizes? What are the disadvantages...or advantages. I just export them straight into Carrara for rendering.I dont do any fancy layer tricks in Photoshop. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted October 26, 2012 Report Share Posted October 26, 2012 As long as your content is RGB+A with 8 bit per channel, PNG, TIF and TGA will work. PNG, TGA and TIF are lossless formats. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor BeatKitano Posted October 26, 2012 Contributor Report Share Posted October 26, 2012 Yeah that, and NEVER use a lossy format for displacement or normal maps, diffuse and spec can be ok (but it's still not ideal), but never use a lossy format for normal maps and displacement as you can get pretty ugly resulsts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member tiburbage Posted October 30, 2012 Member Report Share Posted October 30, 2012 Ive just been looking at my exported maps. I have 6 TGA files at 2k each this comes to about 100 mbs!! I use these just because they seem to be the default choice when you export your OBJ.What do you guys use as a preference.Surely JPEG or PNG would be more economical for file sizes? What are the disadvantages...or advantages. I just export them straight into Carrara for rendering.I dont do any fancy layer tricks in Photoshop. TGA is popular because it is apparently very easy to write an importer/exporter for, and at least in the past was kind of the common denominator for game engine usage. I pretty much always use PNG for non-HDR work because it is both lossless and has good compression, and supports 8bpc RGBA and 8 or 16bit grayscale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member stusutcliffe Posted October 30, 2012 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted October 30, 2012 Thanks! Yup I think its PNG from now on,they are a fraction of the size. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Shawn Driscoll Posted October 30, 2012 Advanced Member Report Share Posted October 30, 2012 TGA and TIF and BMP are the big size formats. PNG and JPG both lose some info even at 100% high quality. The advantage though for PNG is that you can save alpha info in it (depending on the app used). I think my Carrara didn't like BMPs from 3D-Coat. So I ended up using TGA instead. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Contributor BeatKitano Posted October 30, 2012 Contributor Report Share Posted October 30, 2012 Png is lossless. Jpg isn't. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member Shawn Driscoll Posted October 30, 2012 Advanced Member Report Share Posted October 30, 2012 Png is lossless. Jpg isn't. Depending on the app used, PNGs can be reduced further in size just as JPGs can be. Then there is the 24/32 bit scheme that not all apps obey for PNG. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member tiburbage Posted November 11, 2012 Member Report Share Posted November 11, 2012 Depending on the app used, PNGs can be reduced further in size just as JPGs can be. Then there is the 24/32 bit scheme that not all apps obey for PNG. Well, the PNG specification does support stuff like indexed color if you wanted to do that. The important thing with what file formats one chooses is a combination of what characteristics your workflow requires (grayscale, RGB, RGBA, 8bpc, 16bpc, etc.) and what support the apps you use provide for I/O. It's kind of a "least common denominator" thing. I've never had any issues with .PNG in my workflows, which include PS, Maya, LW, 3DC, ZB. I can't vouch for import to Unity or UDK in terms of game engines... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
philnolan3d Posted November 13, 2012 Report Share Posted November 13, 2012 I know for LightWave some users prefer to just use PSD, then it keeps the layers intact but LightWave reads it as a single flattened layer so it uses less memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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