Streamlining Texture Mapping in a 3D World

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Textures are an essential part of any scene, especially high-resolution models. As of your 3D Program, you have been able to display those textures in your view ports. This invaluable feature makes placing decals and the like on objects extremely easy. As an animator, it becomes a critical component of the scene design process.

The benefits of being able to display maps in a view port far outweigh the downsides, but they do exist. When working with high-detail scenes, you will find that it is not difficult to push the limits of your computer or video card by displaying many textures in the view ports.

In your 3D Program, some features are designed to help you out in the texture display department. Displaying Maps By clicking the Material Editor Display Maps button, you can display the most common map types, such as Bitmap, in view ports. If you are using Heidi through the standard Software Z-Buffer option, you will use the computer's memory to display textures.

Although this of your computer or video card by displaying many textures in the view ports is a great thing if you have a good amount of RAM, it also means that it has less RAM for other your 3D Program operations.

If you are using some type of hardware acceleration in the view ports, the hardware usually has some sort of texture memory on board. This form of texture memory is often much quicker than the computer's generic RAM, but it is limited.

In high-detail scenes, it is not uncommon to reach your card upper limit of texture memory. When you do reach that limit, the card now takes on the process of both loading and clearing its memory in order to display the textures. This swapping process is analogous to your computer using its hard drive to swap RAM data. It also results in similar but not equal performance degradation.

So the golden rule should be display only what you need. Let's face it, the only real reason you need to display textures in the view ports is for placement on a 3D mesh. After that, you are usually done. If you are done, turn off the Display Map option in the Material editor. This speeds up performance all around.

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