To answer this question you'll need to determine how close to the camera your texture map is.

The image above uses the same texture map on all three spheres.

A) If like sphere A, your texture map is really close to the camera, the dpi of your texture map needs to correspond to your final output. For example, if the final render shows 1 square inch of the texture map at 2 square inches when rendered, then the texture map dpi should be 600 because is rendered twice as large in the final render. You can see on this sphere that the texture map is pixelating because there isn't enough information when the camera is close.

B) Sphere B shows the same texture map further from the camera. To me, it looks a little "soft" so I might increase the resolution of the texture map to compensate - but maybe not.

C) Using a 300 dpi map on sphere C is a waste because it has too much information. Carrara will slow down when it gets to this sphere if the texture map is 300 dpi because it has to process the additional information.

So, to answer your question, if your final texture map shows up in the final render at 1:1 scaling, it needs to be at 300 dpi if your output resolution is 300 dpi. If the scaling is greater or less than that, the texture map should be adjusted accordingly.

Hope this helps.

Mark

Message edited on: 11/02/2004 10:07

Message edited on: 11/02/2004 10:09