non square textures

Ruz

I was hoping to render to texture normal maps using non sqare texture sizes, ie 2048 by 1024.
Does n't seem to be possible though. it would be nice if max uv editor displayed this size properly also.

KDR_11k

Can't you just downscale the image afterwards then renormalize?

Toomas

take 2048 texture, cut it in half and paint one part red, now arrange all your UV parts on the other half then do your render to texture and just cut half of the image?
No distortion or anything...

Asthane

Actually, I believe UV co-ordinates are stored as values from 0-1 no matter the ratio of the image, so rather than painting half red, you would stretch them by a power of two, render the normals, and as KDR says, downsize it manually.

[edit] Or I suppose Toomas' method would work if you resized the UV's after you render the map, but then you have to line them up, which could be easy or hard depending on your software and method. I would resize the image, myself, but you'll have to see what the quality trade-off is.

Ruz

ok, got it working,but am now thinking this might be too much of a pain to be practical. the idea ws to stretch my head uv's out over a 2048( jsut over half the width) texture to get more space for the back of the neck, whilst maintaning a big area for the face
If it wasn't for the normal map stuff, this would have been fine
thanks for the repies anyway

thomasp

max's uv editor does display non-square textures with the correct aspect ratio. i use 'em all the time, no magic involved as far as i can tell

i have a custom-made checkerboard-map in the desired aspect ratio that i apply to the object, then the uv's are arranged (restriction: rotating uv-chunks yields strange results, therefore i normally edit and arrange roughly my uv's with a 1:1 aspect before plugging in my checker map and adjusting it further with the custom aspect).

render-to-texture indeed does only seem to understand the predefined square image sizes, so i render one size larger and rescale in photoshop. voila.

Ruz

thanks per128. I will get back to this soon