To embed or not to embed, that is the question

[George Ioannidis]

I'm referring to material's bitmaps. I'd noticed drawing can grow fast in size when bitmaps are embedded creating some brontosaurish files. I am not giving my drawings to anybody for further nXt processing so is it necessary?

[Ros. Riha]

as a company policy, we do not embed - once you start using xrefs, the increase in size of the project starts multiplying

[George Ioannidis]

Thanks Rosťo. I think that would be a nice general switch on top of the material pane of nXt, along with possibility of altering each material separately in material editor.

[Roy Hirshkowitz]

There is a general switch in the Options box which applies to all of your drawings (it's a registry setting.)  There is a switch on each texture if you want to individually change it for materials.  

In general, most users don't notice the embedding.  Storage is cheap these days, performance is usually not impacted much.  It's been a pretty nice feature that keeps things portable (you can more easily send me a model for debugging, for example.)  We have a couple of users who have opted out for performance reasons. I'm considering embedding decals as well.

[Ros. Riha]

I definitely see all reasons for embedding in the case of a project consisting of 2-3 dwgs xreffed together... in ACA, your project comprises often from 50 dwgs - nXt material definitions in all dwgs except the one you render from are merely placeholders to carry the material definition across the project. Embedding really is not an option here - so on decals, please, keep an option to link them too.

[George Ioannidis]

I agree with the portability thing Roy. It is nice to have everything in the drawing to be able to continue working on rendering on other computer. On the other hand, when you have to transmit file through internet to other partners working on particular project it starts to be somehow awkward. I think for the purposes of my own rendering production I will follow Ros's way of organizing project files alongside nXt. Simply I have to keep that in mind. :)

[akinlolu olugboji]

When I need to send to other folks on the internet I e-transmit.

[Kevin Lockwood]

Won't you start to have a similar issue with multiple copies of the maps? The way my 2 man company works, I send the model back and forth a few times during the process, saving versions in different folders. By the end of the job, we may have 3 or 4 copies. If the maps are not embedded, each folder will get a duplicate set of materials. In the long run, management of all those extra files will be too tedious.  Yes, sending larger files won't be as simple as zipping and emailing assuming there are size restrictions, but there are other ways around that problem (yousendit and others)

 

I still think it would be nice to be able to separate the files from the material definition either in the material editor or maybe through an option in e-transmit.

[Ros. Riha]

I do not understand at all:-)

I presume:

• You have the company storage for projects - there you save different versions of a project, project specific bitmaps, material definitions etc. ... all users use the same files - no need for sending/receiving, everything is on one place. in case one of you works remotely, there are multiple software solutions for mirroring/synchronizing or remote access.
• You have the company storage for "general data" - be it textures, HDRIs, material definitions... users generally do not change these, only use them. In most cases, you just take a texture from there and use it for your material - any user uses the same link for the same texture, located on the company texture storage.

All in all - there is no specific management related, nothing duplicates...there are only different versions of DWGs

[Kevin Lockwood]

guess I should have mentioned that we don't have a central office, we each work from home, so files are send back and forth quite often. If I send the files over with the maps embeded, there will be not confusion over what maps go where.

Say were using a stone exterior venier, I'll tweak that map until the boss is happy with the color. The bump and displacement maps will stay the same, but there may be 10 versions of the defuse map.

I just perfer having one file; one material definition and skip all the clutter.

[Ros. Riha]

File System: OK, be happy.

Tweaking of textures: set strength to less than 1 and then you could do so without altering the actual bitmap