Question regarding DDS format and octane Tweet

[nildoe]

Hi Guys,

I know DDS is a format related to gpu rendering...I would like to know what are the advantages regarding using it for octane over standard jpg. png etc.. I mean does it make octane render faster? I tried to convert to a png to dds and the file got from about 8mb to 16mb, which leads to me understand the dds are heavier..but strangely enough when i rendered the same mesh that had the png on before, to a dds... octane was using about less 100mb with dds (from 0.520gb to about 0.420gb).. is this normal?

does it mean octane internally will convert std jpg/png etc to dds to render? if thats the case is that why the tooltip of the channel format says its preferable to to use DDS pre-processed?

if so... will that also help with reducing time to load the mat editor every time we open it?

EDIT: I just did another test... I loaded a character with 19 Maps (jpgs and tiff) mostly 4k maps btw, it took about 7seconds to load onto memory and then about 6sec to render... THEN i closed max and re-opened, but this time I replaced ALL 19 maps with dds versions of each one (4k versions as well)... the mat editor now seems a bit more responsive and the mesh took only 3sec to load on vga ram and 3sec to render!!!

and the same file that use take about 1GB of vram now takes only 460MB!!! this is too good!!!

I did however also discover that converting HDR to DDS actually is bad.. it takes most of lighting information of the file

can someone please confirm that dds helps in reducing load times and responsiveness of the mat editor?? I'm getting really excited here!!



Nildo

[paride4331]

Hi Nildone,
new v2018.1-XB2 allows to save compressed textures and internally cached now, so it's not helpful to convert textures to DDS.
You can find cache settings in Global settings, Material tab.
Regards
Paride

[nildoe]

Paride,

will that have the same performance has my tests? Im especially interested in increasing render speed and load time on Vram as well as memory reducing

[paride4331]

Hi Nildoe,
Cached GPU compressed textures should just do it!
Regards
Paride

[SergKlyosov]

Hi Paride,

Is there any way to save cashed texture from material editor or in order to save it for future project I need to find them in cash directory and copy to another folder on my drive?

Cheers

[paride4331]

Hi SergKlyosov,
I will ask to developers for a custom LocalDB folder and cached textures custom folder too.
Regards
Paride

[senorpablo]

Can we please get a tool or method to set all textures to use compression? I'm trying to load a massive scene with hundreds of materials which won't fit into memory.

Having to manually set each map by hand to use compression is extremely time consuming.

[paride4331]

Can we please get a tool or method to set all textures to use compression? I'm trying to load a massive scene with hundreds of materials which won't fit into memory.

Having to manually set each map by hand to use compression is extremely time consuming.

Hi senorpablo,
it could be, I will ask to developers.
Regards
Paride

[senorpablo]

Can we please get a tool or method to set all textures to use compression? I'm trying to load a massive scene with hundreds of materials which won't fit into memory.

Having to manually set each map by hand to use compression is extremely time consuming.

Hi senorpablo,
it could be, I will ask to developers.
Regards
Paride

Thanks.

Because the default is 'Automatic' I suppose it would be nice to have a global setting somewhere: [Best quality(BC7), Good Quality(BC4)] which would select those options internally without changing each map explicitly.