2048 mosaic texture error on view

[sciophyte]

I have been generating a huge terrain 32kmx32km 512 mosaic map, I let it spend about a week rendering the texture at 4x resolution (2048 texture maps), when it was finally done it had errors at the end of it, I'll have to send you the log file i reckon. it did complete the map, but it errors when i try to view it and only shows a black screen. I've been trying to export it anyway, regardless if it can show it or not (haven't messed around too much because it takes an hour to preview the map) but it brings up the 'Exporting mosaic' progress window with 0% in the title and everything goes white, i let that run for a day and when i checked again it was still at 0% and both windows white. is there some sort of load time with no progess indicator which may be taking a really long time to prepare the map for export or is it just freezing?

any help is appreciated,
Sciophyte

[Aaron]

Hi Sciophyte,

Yup, the logfile would be rather useful. The way to test whether the map worked is to look at the files on the disk (mosaics are always automatically saved). They'll be in the the '[project directory]\TX' folder. Regarding the progress display; it doesn't always update properly when loading/saving large maps (I'll put this on the to-do list). There is no load time when exporting mosaics.

Best regards,
Aaron.

[sciophyte]

it did complete the map, all the jpgs are in the tx dir, i've been trying to export them to bmp, i need to flip the y and i've been assuming bmp is going to give me a non compressed (better quality) version of the map. is this a true assumption? forgive my ignorance, i'm not much of a graphics person.

[Aaron]

Hi Sciophyte,

The texture was generated as JPEGs, so the compression damage is already done and re-saving in bitmap again won't undo it. If you'd like to generate the texture as bitmaps, go to 'file->format preferences', then 'project maps->texture->BMP' and click on the 'use format' and 'make default' buttons. After this, every texture you generate will be bitmaps. Also, if you want to flip the texture, click on the 'Options...' button and enable the 'InvertY' flag (double-click on it).

Of course, I think you'll be hard-pressed to spot the difference between the bitmaps and JEPGs. By default L3DT uses 95-quality compression on JPEGs, which don't introduce much discernible loss.

Cheers,
Aaron.

[sciophyte]

hey aaron,

thanks for the reply, Is the inverty option available under default preferences? I'll have to check it out when I get home, but it looks like no matter if I want to use jpg or bmp i will still have to regenerate my texture map just for the inverty at this point, unless i whip up a little util or something for myself. I did give the jpg's a try on my rendering engine and they do look good as they are, so I wouldn't mind using these, did you manage to find out what was freezing the application on export? if i can export to jpg using inverty I assume it shouldn't take very long to use the preexisting jpg's and just flipping them...just want to avoid having to let it generate for another week hehe.

thanks again,
sciophyte

[Aaron]

Hi Sciophyte,

You can enable the 'InvertY' flag from the export wizard. Use the 'Options...' button. So, if you're happy with the JPEG compression, you don't need to re-generate.

I'm not yet sure that the export did actually freeze. The dialog stopped updating, but that's not unexpected, and doesn't mean the export wasn't progressing. Did it actually output any files when you tried to export?

Cheers,
Aaron.

[sciophyte]

I need the Y invert, but I cannot get it to export with the freeze. I thought if the invert was a default preference i could have it done in initial generation instead of thru the export (as i can't use it atm).

The day I left it exporting it didn't generate any files in the specified directory, i let it go for about 18-20 hours.

I'll open up this map again tonite, I've been rendering some smaller maps in the meantime so I haven't had a chance the last couple days.

thanks,
Juan

[Aaron]

Hi Juan,

I'll have another look at the export problem.

I thought if the invert was a default preference i could have it done in initial generation instead of thru the export.

You can do this using the file preferences dialog. Go to 'file->format preferences', then 'project maps->texture->JPG' (or whichever format you want to use), click on the 'Options...' button, and finally enable the 'InvertY' flag (double-click on it). With this option enabled, any textures you make will automatically be flipped when written to disk.

Cheers,
Aaron.

[Aaron]

Hello again,

Well, I've just exported a 32768x32768 pixel mosaic texture without problems. It took about 15 minutes. The progress dialog usually took a few seconds to update, but it always did. Oh yes, that was with JPEG. I'll let you know how the bitmap export goes in about another 15 minutes.

Has anyone else had a problem with exporting maps lately?

Best regards,
Aaron.

Update: Bitmap export worked fine too. No freeze observed.