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db&w Support Forum  |  infiniMap  |  General infiniMap Discussion  |  any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format? 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. « previous next »
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Author Topic: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?  (Read 3979 times)
zareh
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any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« on: February 03, 2006, 09:23:12 AM »

Hi Mike,
I was wondering if you've given any thought to supporting HDR images or .exr images? Can't say I've used HDR images much but I have used .exr images. Are either of these two formats true floating point?
I wouldn't classify either of these as more important than supporting 16 bit images though.
Best Regards,
Zareh
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lightwolf
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #1 on: February 03, 2006, 04:55:22 PM »

Hi Mike,
I was wondering if you've given any thought to supporting HDR images or .exr images? Can't say I've used HDR images much but I have used .exr images. Are either of these two formats true floating point?
I wouldn't classify either of these as more important than supporting 16 bit images though.
Hi Zareh,
Both are true floating point, openEXR even gives you the option of using either 16 or 32bit floats.
openEXR support is planned, as is 16bit support for JPEG 2000 images (the later is likely to come first).

Cheers,
Mike
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zareh
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2006, 10:38:52 PM »

that's great Mike!
I didn't know JPEG 2000 could handle 16 bit images.
take care,
Zareh
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lightwolf
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2006, 12:02:26 AM »

that's great Mike!
I didn't know JPEG 2000 could handle 16 bit images.
Well, the support libraries we use support up to 28bits per channel, but only integer.
This will require some additions to the the infiniMap core though.

Cheers,
Mike
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zareh
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2006, 10:01:36 AM »

I see. Thanks for the clarification Mike.
I must admit I don't quite understand what the difficulty is with using a 16 bit image as a displacement map in LightWave. I remember you saying something about this a while ago and now I was reading more stuff about it regarding ZBrush maps and LightWave displacements. Is it because LightWave's SDK allows displacement values of 0-255?
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Zareh
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lightwolf
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2006, 12:29:23 PM »

I must admit I don't quite understand what the difficulty is with using a 16 bit image as a displacement map in LightWave. I remember you saying something about this a while ago and now I was reading more stuff about it regarding ZBrush maps and LightWave displacements. Is it because LightWave's SDK allows displacement values of 0-255?
Oh no, internally LW uses 32bit float for all image calculcations.
The problems with 16bit displacements is that LW doesn't ship with a loader that supports 16bit files.

There is also the issue (concerning infiniMap Pro for displacements) that it is not likely for LWs displacements to pass the proper size of the area to be displaced to the plugins, which makes it very difficult to use the memory conserving algorithms used by infiniMap for displacements.
Basically infiniMap would need to know the size of the area to be displaced (the distance of the vertex to the next closest one) to properly handle the level of detail for the image. I've yet to see a displacement plugin for LW that provides that information.

Lightwave internally stores images as either 8bit integer or 32bit float (per channel), infiniMap Pro will be much more flexible in that respect. Currently planned are 8 and 16 bit integer as well as 16 and 32 bit float.

Cheers,
Mike
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zareh
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2006, 03:39:37 PM »

I see. thanks for clearing that up Mike. So I guess unless the plugin is going to create it's own data structure duplicating the vertex and connectivity information of LW's object it isn't going to be possible to do a good general purpose displacement plugin for LightWave.
take care,
Zareh
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2006, 06:58:43 PM »

I see. thanks for clearing that up Mike. So I guess unless the plugin is going to create it's own data structure duplicating the vertex and connectivity information of LW's object it isn't going to be possible to do a good general purpose displacement plugin for LightWave.
Well, it would at least need to store some additional data to get a decent performance. I believe Lynx3Ds displacement plugin for example caches some data as well.
But generally, yes, the data passed on to the plugin by default from LW would not be sufficient.
Cheers,
Mike
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zareh
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Re: any thoughts on supporting HDR or ILM"s EXR image format?
« Reply #8 on: April 20, 2006, 10:37:11 AM »

I know Mike and I haven't gotten back to you regarding this. Our fault. Will have to gather some notes and send them to you.

Best Regards,
Zareh
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