Teqser (pronounced “Texer”) is a tool that prepares texture images for use by the renderer, a “texture compiler” if you like. Even though procedural shading is a very powerful tool for defining surface appearance, there is still a large number of applications where a texture image is the best solution. A texture image can be used by itself to define the colour, transparency or bumps of a surface, but it can also be used as one part of a complicated procedural shader.
Texture images need to be preprocessed for use by the renderer. Regular textures need to be prefiltered to prevent aliasing, and environment maps need to be set up and assembled correctly. The texture files for Aqsis are not merely images, but slightly more complex data structures to give the renderer better data to work with.
The input to the texture preprocessor is one or more image files in TIFF format, specified on the command line. The output is a texture file that can be used by an SL shader to perform texture lookups. The texture output format is special to Aqsis and should not be used with any other renderer. In particular, it is different from the texture file format in Pixar’s PRMan.
The output file can have any name, but the recommended file extension is
.tx
.
If you want to create a regular image texture, just invoke Teqser with the input and output file names as options:
teqser mytexture.tif mytexture.tx
There are several command-line options to Teqser to specify what kind of texture you want to create. Please refer to the [[doc:teqser_commands|appendix]] for details.
A short help text listing all options can be displayed using the aqsis
-help
option. All options can either begin with a single dash or two dashes
and can appear anywhere on the command line.
Usage: teqser [options] infile outfile
-h, -help Print this help and exit
-version Print version information and exit
-v, -verbose=integer Set log output level
0 = errors
1 = warnings (default)
2 = information
3 = debug
-compression=string [none|lzw|packbits|deflate] (default: none)
-envcube px nx py ny pz nz
produce a cubeface environment map from 6 images.
-envlatl produce a latlong environment map from an image file.
-shadow produce a shadow map from a z file.
-swrap=string s wrap [black|periodic|clamp] (default: black)
-smode=string (equivalent to swrap for BMRT compatibility)
-twrap=string t wrap [black|periodic|clamp] (default: black)
-tmode=string (equivalent to twrap for BMRT compatibility)
-wrap=string wrap s&t [black|periodic|clamp]
-mode=string s (equivalent to wrap for BMRT compatibility)
-filter=string [box|bessel|catmull-rom|disk|gaussian|sinc|triangle|mitchell] (default: box)
-fov(envcube)=float [>=0.0f] (default: 90)
-swidth, -sfilterwidth=float
s width [>0.0f] (default: 1)
-twidth, -tfilterwidth=float
t width [>0.0f] (default: 1)
-width, -filterwidth=float
width [>0.0f] set both swidth and twidth (default: -1)
-quality=float [>=1.0f && <= 100.0f] (default: 70)
-bake=float [>=2.0f && <= 2048.0f] (default: 128)
-resize=string [up|down|round|up-|down-|round-] (default: up)
Not used, for BMRT compatibility only!
zfile
display
driver, and will produce a shadow map. This display format is generally system
specific, so the depth file should be produced on the same architecture and OS,
preferably the same machine, as that on which teqser is being run, the same is
not true of the shadow map, which is system agnostic.s
, t
or both directions. Options are:
s
will result in the colour
black being returned.The mode
variants are compatibility options, included to make
transition from BMRT to Aqsis easier.
s
, t
or both directions.Level | Verbosity |
---|---|
0 | Only display errors |
1 | Display warnings (default) |
2 | Display informational messages |
3 | Display debug information |
Table 1