Image Clip Property Editor

| General | Adjust | Transform | Texturing

Edit the color, gamma, size, and sharpness of a texture image or sequence (in the case of an animated texture). Also provides options for image display and image management optimization.

To display:

Open a render tree view and double-click on the orange image clip node whose options you want to change.
Select a geometric object or model, choose Modify Texture, and select the image clip from the submenu.
In an explorer, set the scope to Sources/Clips and click the icon next to the image clip you want to modify.
You can also open the image clip viewer (see The Image Clip Viewer [Data Exchange]), load a flipbook, and choose File Clip Properties from its command bar.

General

Clip

[Clip Name]	Defines the clip's name. By default, the clip is named after its source. This option is useful if you are using several instances of the same source. You can name each one differently, i.e.: cloud_map, cloud_map_alpha,cloud_map_lowres, etc.
[Image]	Displays a thumbnail of the image clip. If the image is a sequence of images, you can use the Stop, Play, Pause, or Loop commands to control it.

Referenced Source

[Select Source]

Displays the name of the source used to create the image clip. From the drop-down menu, you can select any other source defined for the scene. Of course, this will change the image clip.

Time Source

Enable Effects	Sets the image clip's management mode to Load in Memory. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any other management mode disables the effects options.
Disable Effects	Sets the image clip's management mode to Use from Disk. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any management mode other than Load in Memory disables the effects options.

If you're using an object with ICE attributes, such as ICE particles, the time source allows you to use that object's attributes to control the animation of the image sequence.

By default, the Time Source is set to the scene's time, but you can change it any ICE attribute that is on the object. For example, you may want to use the particle AgeLimit attribute to use the images in the sequence based on the particle's lifespan that you've set.

The list includes ICE attributes only from objects used by this image clip (either directly on the object or indirectly if it's used via shape instancing).

See Sprites on ICE Particles [ICE Particle Simulations] for more information.

Crop

Although cropping can be done using the cropping manipulators, you can also "double crop" by defining a section of an image.

X, Y Minimum, Maximum

Defines the coordinates of the cropped section of an image. The lower-left corner of the image is X = 0, Y = 0, and the upper-left corner of the image is X = 1, Y = 1.

Adjust

[Image]

Displays a thumbnail of the image clip. If the image is a sequence of images, you can use the Play, Pause, Stop, or Loop commands to control it.

HDR and OpenEXR

This option is for use with High Dynamic Range images and has an effect only when the image file format is either HDR (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr).

Display Gamma

Performs a display-only gamma correction using the value specified here.

OpenEXR and HDR images are linear floating point format so they do not require a gamma correction when used in rendering. However, because they are in floating point format the monitor cannot display the full range of colors and a Display Gamma correction is added to make the images look brighter when viewing them in the OpenGL viewports.

Exposure

This option is for use with High Dynamic Range images and has an effect only when the image file format is either HDR (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr).

Exposure (f-stop)

Offsets the image's original exposure in f-stop units. Higher values increase the exposure, brightening the image, while low values decrease the exposure, darkening the image.

The offset can range from an f-stop value of -12 to 12. When set to 0, the image is used as is.

Color Profile

To achieve the best quality results, particularly when working with 8-bit images, Softimage converts all image clips into linear floating point data in order to perform its calculations at the highest bit-depth possible. Each time a texture lookup is performed, mental ray samples the texture and processes each pixel as a color value in floating point.

To accurately convert and render out each image clip, you must select the color profile that corresponds to the color space in which your original image was created. This indicates to mental ray how to convert (if necessary) the image clip from its current color space to the linear floating point color space, including whether or not any gamma correction data is stored.

For example, if you already use a linear color space workflow to create your textures, then mental ray does not need to do any additional processing on the image clips. You can set the Color Profile option to Linear and your image clips will be used as is.

As a convenience, you can set a preference that declares to mental ray the color profile that you typically use to create your input images, so that by default, all newly created image clips will be handled accordingly. See the Color Profile options in the Rendering Preferences [Preference Reference].

Color Profile

Specifies the color space that your input image was originally created in.

Automatic: Find out automatically which color profile was used to create the image. A color profile of sRGB or Linear is chosen based on the image's format or bit-depth. The image is then processed accordingly.

The color profile is chosen as follows:
- 8-bit images are considered sRGB.
- OpenEXR and HDR images are considered Linear.
- Cineon and DPX images are logarithmic. They are automatically converted to Linear color space.
Linear: Specifies that the image clip was created in linear color space. The image is used (no conversion necessary) and rendered out as is.
sRGB: Specifies that the image clip was created in sRGB color space. The image is converted to linear floating point and rendered out.
User Gamma: Lets you perform a gamma correction on the rendered version of the image clip using the value specified by the Gamma parameter (below).

Gamma

When Color Profile is set to User Gamma, a gamma correction is performed using the value specified here. The Gamma value is removed from the image which makes it darker in the rendered output.

Enable Effects	Sets the image clip's management mode to Load in Memory. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any other management mode disables the effects options.
Disable effects	Sets the image clip's management mode to Use from Disk. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any management mode other than Load in Memory disables the effects options.

Color Correction

NoteColor modifications in HSV or HLS space are not compatible with unclamped color values in floating-point (HDR) images.

Hue	Controls a 360 degrees hue shift through HLS color space spectrum without modifying the intensity or saturation of the color.
Saturation	Adjusts the saturation or amount of "pigment" in a color. 1 = no white and all color; 0 = no color, just white light.
Gain	Increases and decreases the contrast levels between light and dark colors. 0.5 = no change in contrast.
Brightness	Controls the brightness of the image clip. A negative value darkens the image and a positive value brightens it. Used to compensate for non-linearity in displays.

Convert

RGBA to gray scale	Converts the image to a gray scale (black and white) image.
8 to 16 bits per channel	Converts the image to the 16-bit format so it can be used with advanced image-editing tools.

Blur

Radius	Determines the radius the blur effect uses. 0 = no blur is visible. The radius is calculated from the center of the image.
Amount	Defines how blurry the defined radius becomes.
Blur Alpha	Applies the blur to the Alpha channel.

Transform

[Image]	Displays a thumbnail of the image clip. If the image is a sequence of images, you can use the Stop, Play, or Pause commands to control it.
Enable Effects	Sets the image clip's management mode to Load in Memory. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any other management mode disables the effects options.
Disable effects	Sets the image clip's management mode to Use from Disk. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any management mode other than Load in Memory disables the effects options.

Crop

Although cropping can be done using the cropping manipulators, you can also "double crop" by defining a section of an image.

X, Y Minimum, Maximum

Defines the coordinates of the cropped section of an image. The lower-left corner of the image is X = 0, Y = 0, and the upper-left corner of the image is X = 1, Y = 1.

Flip

Flip Horizontal	Turns the image 180 degrees horizontally (on Y axis) to create a mirror image.
Flip Vertical	Turns the image 180 degrees vertically (on X axis) to make the image upside-down.

Rescale

Type

Sets the image resolution. You can lower the resolution to reduce memory for previews.

You can choose a preset option, or choose Custom Size to specify the image's new size using the Res. X and Res. Y settings.

This value can be overridden for all clips with effects enabled in the Clips Property Editor.

Res. X/Y

When the RescaleType is set to Custom Size, these sliders define the custom image resolution.

Texturing

Mental Ray Multi-Resolution Texture

Enable Multi-Resolution Texture	Switches on the Pyramid mapping (MipMap-like) option, and performs a pre-blurring or pre-filtering of a texture in order to make it appear smoother when far from the camera.
Blurring	Defines the degree of pre-blurring to be applied to the object's texture(s).

Image Management

Defines how an image clip is managed prior to saving a scene.

Mode

Load in Memory (Default): For editing the image clip and storing all clip changes in memory. When rendered, the image is sent to each slave.

Use from Disk: References the image clip (source) from disk, thus not considering any changes made from the FX tab. When rendered, the images are sent to the render slaves.

Broadcast: Also references the image clip from disk. When rendered, the image's path is sent to the render slaves.

OpenGL Texture Settings

Maximum Width or Height

Defines the maximum image resolution to use in Textured and Textured Decal display modes.

Mipmapping

Generate MipMaps	Activates MipMaps (or pyramid filtering). This feature lets you smooth textures that are far from the camera by using a pre-filtered or pre-blurred texture in place of the original texture. MipMapping is faster to render than anti-aliasing.
Texture Minification Filter (Far)	Defines the kind of optimization that will be used to smooth textures that are far from the camera. Uninterpolated pixel is the quickest but lowest-quality optimization available. The slowest but best-quality optimization is the Linearly interpolated pixel using interpolated MipMap resolution.
Texture Magnification Filter (Near)	Defines the kind of optimization that will be used to smooth textures that are very close to the camera. Uninterpolated pixel is the quickest but lowest-quality optimization available. The slowest but best-quality optimization is the Linearly interpolated pixel.

Video Texture/De-Interlacing

Field Type

Specifies the field order for video images clips. This setting should match the setting on the Fields and Scripts tab of the mental ray Render Options Property Editor.

You should set the clip's field dominance when you are rendering the scene in fields instead of frames. This deinterlaces the clip at render time so that only one of the clip's fields appear in each of the rendered fields.

Set the field to None, Lower Field First / Even (NTSC and DV Formats), or Upper Field First / Odd (PAL and HD Formats).

Field Type is a clip effect, requiring that the clip's Image Management mode be set to Load in Memory. Click the Enable Effects button to activate the Field Type option.

Enable Effects

Sets the image clip's management mode to Load in Memory. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any other management mode disables the effects options.

Disable effects

Sets the image clip's management mode to Use from Disk. Because Softimage must store copies of the image clip in memory in order to apply clip effects, using any management mode other than Load in Memory disables the effects options.

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