Hi all,
I'm looking for generally good and efficient practices in workflow in several areas:
1) How does the painted shader work exactly: If I paint at a far distance, are the triangles kept "large" and so there's not that much painted data yet if I zoom in the data will be "choppy" because the triangle are large;
OR does TG2 scale any large painted shaders as you zoom in;
OR does TG2 save your painted shaders at a small scale to begin with, meaning that if you paint over vast areas from far away you're saving huge amounts of data?
2) In general, is it more computer-resource efficient to have many painted shaders or many individidual grayscale image maps that act as blend shaders? E.g., if I have 20 painted shaders in one TG2 file, that TG2 file size increases. However, if I have 20 painted image maps from Photoshop (reasonably sized), all those 20 image maps are small individual files and don't bulk up a single TG2 file. I probably have greater flexibility in painting in PSD as well. However, does one method take longer to load, or to render, or to other, using one method or the other?
3) In general, while knowing that there are lots of situations where you may want a specific look that requires a specific node path, is it more efficient to have "simple" surface shaders stacked, OR massively combined color/displacement shaders tied into a very few surface shaders? In other words, I could have a color power fractal input into another PF, into another PF, into another PF, all with their own blend shaders, then finally tied into a surface layer;
OR I could put one color PF into one surface shader, then tie that surface shader into a second surface shader which only has one color PF as well, then on and on. Is one method more efficient than the other during processing or rendering?
Thanks,
-Matt