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best_practices_lys

Best Practices

To get the best results from Lys, we suggest that you follow a small number of recommendations to ensure that the quality of the processed maps is as high as possible.

Use High(er) Precision Images

The bit depth of the images that you use in Lys have a large impact on the quality of the processed maps. Unfortunately, 8bit images have extremely low precision due to the relatively small number of values that can be represented per channel.

As a result of this limited precision, it can be difficult to reproduce variations of angle and slope with acceptable accuracy. This limitation of 8bit images may become apparent in the form of banding. These artifacts may not be immediately noticeable, however they are still present and may reduce the accuracy and fidelity of Lys’s output.

The maximum amount of unique values per channel for each bit depth is listed below:

  • 8bit Integer: 256 Values
  • 16bit Integer: 65536 Values
  • 32bit Integer: 4294967295 Values
  • 16bit Float: 65536 Values
  • 32bit Float: 4261412864 Values

We recommend that you use the highest bit depth possible in whatever source images are to processed by Lys. If your current pipeline is restricted to 8bit, you can export the final map as 8bit from within Lys once the processing has been completed. You will always get more accurate results by authoring source images in higher bit depths and only converting to your target format (eg: 8bit) during Lys’s export.

For production-quality results we recommend using at least 16bit float source images whenever possible.

Use A Fast GPU!

While Lys can be used on any OpenGL 4.3 compliant graphics card, you will get faster (though identical) results if you use a more powerful card.

best_practices_lys.txt · Last modified: 2017/05/23 03:49 (external edit)