Geoff Wedig wrote:
> 
> Has anyone done any work on optimizing textures?  Ie, is, for example, a
> pigment_map or a texture_map faster?  Are layered textures better than a
> texture map?
> 
> Since many textures can be accomplished in a variety of ways, it'd be good
> to know which ones are faster than others.  I'm currently fighting a really
> slow render, and I could really use something like this.
> 
> Geoff

Well, I'm currently testing a simple plane with a custom texture and a pigment
map
and a single light source.
When the texturing function is the quickest code ( "{ return 0.0 }" ), my render
time
is 40s. 
With some computations, it can go up to 43s.
(Test without any AA, so always same number of rays)
So the slow part is probably not the texture computation. 
(no point in trying to optimize by 10% a code section which is only responsible
for 10% of the time: the resulting boost would only be of 1% ! Better optimizing
the part which is responsible of the 90%, and then only try to optimize the
textures code.

I would suggest you do the same kind of experiment with 
all the standard POV textures, and then bring us your results.

Post a reply to this message