- Select the surfaces you want to create a smear map for.
- In the , double-click the texture to open its .
- In the texture , click the button under the Effects section.
- A dialog box appears.
The default is 256 pixels square. Image files are created and sized so that the corresponds to the longest dimension of the largest selected surface. If more than one surface is selected, the other image
files are proportionally smaller. The valid range is 8 - 1024 pixels.
Tip
Larger image files require more memory to render and, depending on the render specifications, may not noticeably improve render
quality. is recommended in most circumstances, but takes four times longer than if is OFF.
Note
places the newly generated image files in a subdirectory (that has the same name as the shader being converted) in the pix
directory of the current project.
- Click OK. Information is displayed in the information line.
The progress bar at the far right indicates the status of the current image creation.
- When the operation is complete:
- the texture is replaced by its ,
- a texture is mapped to this texture’s parameter, and
- the texture’s list contains a separate image file for each selected surface.
Each selected surface now has its own which has all of the same properties as the original texture.
Notes
- Because the operation destroys the texture, you may want to save the texture (or copy its shader) before using .
- If you press during the operation, the files created up to that point will be correct but will not necessarily be assigned. Even if you delete the
shader used by , the image files still exist in a directory with the name of the original shader in the current pix directory. If you do
a second operation using the same shader and objects, the previously created files are overwritten without warning.
- You can use for spline type surfaces.
- Any image files created are referenced on the list of the new file texture. Each surface gets its own image file for every texture converted. The texture created has no default file, only per object files, therefore the shader swatch does not display the file texture.
To display the texture on the shader swatch, copy any image file name from the list to the default field (click in the list to highlight the image file name, then click in the default field with the to paste).
has the following limitations:
- If is OFF for the texture, does not convert the texture properly.
- The can only have certain and settings:
- , , , and can be set to anything
- should be set to 0
- and should be set to 1
- and must have the same value; the on the must be scaled by the repeat value. For example, if and are both 5, then set the “value” on the to 5.
- If the has an image file or texture mapped to , , or , then you must map a copy of the (the texture created by ) to that image file or texture.
- Bump and displacement maps may show artifacts.
Projection tools
There are two ways to create a texture: using the or using the tools.
- To create a texture in the , you first create a shader, map a texture to the shader, and then position the texture using its .
- If you create a in the modeling window, the tools create a corresponding shader and texture in the .
There are eight different types of tools, representing the eight different types of projections. See Projection Texture Parameters in Render > Multi-lister for a description of each projection type.