[Jonathan Desimini]

(Long but just wanted to explain myself and thinking behind this. Sorry. )

So here’s what I’ve noticed in 2020 version 11 with the new custom texture catalog. When I find a texture that either I made (using Photoshop) or that was already cropped with the correct proportions for the pattern repeat, I would then import it and use as one would expect.

However after importing  50 or 55 textures I started to have a problem with 2020 crashing. It seems at this point, the program would have some type of error after makes 3 modifications to a job file. Once I learned that I could only change 3 attributes and then needed to save close and reopen – I continued on my way just assuming it was a program issue. But then, with extra time to spare I started to troubleshoot the malady.

First, I must admit I have no computer programing experience I’m just a tinker and a reader that then does what sounds right based on the babble from various forums and most of the times I luck out.

With that said, I assumed the issue was with the actual catalog itself. I went to the folder containing the files and realized it was 980 MB. With only 53 or so textures, they were averaging almost 18.5 MB per file. Some were actually only a few KB so there were a few files that were 30-40 MB alone! Of course when I first went hunting for the textures I wanted to use I didn’t pay that much attention to the file size. Some of the ones I made in photoshop I limited to 1MB but after seeing this larger folder, I decided to cut the fat.

 
<p style=”text-align: center;”>Best Practices (Maybe?)</p>
First I removed all my custom textures, deleting them one by one from a blank job file. Then I went into the folder I created to initially save my textures and used Adobe Photoshop to resample and reduce each file so that it wasn’t larger than 56KB (my own rule, perhaps 2020 techs can weigh in on this). Once done I had a folder of around 4/5MB.

So did it help? Yes. No more crashing, No more issues with the number of times I can change a texture and most importantly – FASTER RENDERS. I only want to point this out since I wasn’t able to find any guides in the help file for how files should be selected or what size they should be. There’s actually very little information and it would probably help many more than just those here to have this official reference or guide.

I look back and can only think that, originally bringing in these files was rather silly of me but I wasn’t once thinking that the size would cause any issues. Probably, I thought that if the file size was too large 2020 would have some sort of prompt explaining that I needed to adjust the file size or pick something else, etc. OR I probably assumed that whatever file I selected 2020 would resize on it’s only to an acceptable resolution and size for the rendering engine. I never would have imagined it would try or somehow use any file I threw at it, regardless of it’s size.

I’ve attached an example of what my renders look like even with the reduced resolution. This one took about 4 minutes in the background while I worked at high resolution with global illumination on, ceiling lighting off and scene lighting off. I placed 4 recessed lights myself and then three strip lights (one cannot be seen in this render as the “men’s side” of the bathroom is cut off.

#my2cents

@designedbyjonathan

 

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   KarnbadRender.jpg
   

[Santiago Morales]

Hello Jonathan.  I like your analysis and recommendations.  We will look into it a bit further and consider them for an upcoming release.

Thank you,

Santiago

[Chris Blackman]

I was told at one point that imported textures should not be any larger than 512 PIXELS x 512 PIXELS.

Anything larger than that starts to cause errors and slow downs in rendering.

You can keep the custom textures but limit them to within that size.

Paint for windows does a pretty good job of this. I have also used GIMP. In any case you may need to crop the image you are using before you resize to 512×512 pixels

[Chris Blackman]

I did some repair work on my custom textures last Friday. I started getting strange error messages when I loaded them. Originally I thought it was that I had textures that were too large but after selectively removing and replacing textures I discovered the problem was in some very small (1 Kb) files.

I also learned that you  can play with the texture files in the custom material folder WITHOUT having to close and re-open 20-20 design every time. You DO have to close whatever 20-20 windows you opened to get to the Custom Textures.

If there is a problem loading a Custom texture then you can find out right away.

If you get an OUT OF MEMORY error when loading the custom textures then you do to RESTART 2020 design. Otherwise you can drag-n-drop, copy and paste the custom materials freely.

 

 

[Mike Langensiepen]

Thanks Jonathan and Chris – very useful info.

[Chris Blackman]

Ok, now I want to see that movie…..

[Chris Blackman]

Just a quick question (if anyone is following this thread still):

Is there an easy way to delete the duplicate custom materials?

All the custom materials are in compressed files with random file names.

When I delete a custom texture from one design and then go to use a custom texture in a new design the “deleted” texture is there. Unfortunately, with several upgrades recently I have been copying the previous versions custom materials into the current versions custom materials. Because the files all have unique file names there is no copy/replace option.

 

[Mike Langensiepen]

Each of the unique files is a Zip archive containing the image plus an XML file. The only thing I can think of is to check the contents of each zip file to look for duplicate images. You can do this manually (sort the directory by file size and only look at zips that have identical file sizes) or using a zip content comparator:
https://www.ultraedit.com/support/tutorials-power-tips/ultracompare/compare-zip-rar-and-jar-archives.html

[Chris Blackman]

Thank you. The sorting by file size made it much easier.

[Lee Hurley]

My texture tiling viewer is showing in 3 X 3 is there a way to change that so when you use a picture it shows up as one not tiled?

 

[Lee Hurley]

This is what comes up when I try and put a picture in a window or patio window.

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   2017-12-15_10-45-52.jpg
   

[Mike Langensiepen]

I get this all the time. I usually resort to sticking a ‘painting’ on the outside of the glass (make it see through) and change the image to whatever I want.