Loading multi-tiled UV textures through a single texture node

UV tiling lets you use a single File texture node to load, preview, and render textures composed of multiple images that correspond to the grid tiles in your UV layout. This means you can open and display ultra-high resolution textures produced by 3D painting applications such as Mudbox, and provides a more effective alternative to using UV sets.

With UV tiling, textures are displayed as tiles in UV space. Each tile is a unit wide in width and height (1x1) in UV space. However, it is not limited to UV values of 0 to 1. Instead, the tile can span from 0 to 1, or 3 to 4, or 10 to 11 in both the U and V dimensions.

See also UV tiles.

Tip: You can visualize your UV tiles in Viewport 2.0, as well as render using mental ray for Maya.
Note: The Wrap U and Wrap V attributes of the place2dTexture node have no effect on UV tile rendering in mental ray for Maya.

To load and display multi-tiled UV textures

  1. Connect a File texture node to your shading network.
  2. Load the first of your UV tiles in the Image Name attribute for the File node.

    You can do this using the Attribute Editor, or using the Property Editor in the Hypershade. (See also View attributes in the Hypershade Property Editor).

  3. Select from one of the following UV Tiling Modes:
    • 0-based (Zbrush) - select this option if your UV co-ordinates start at 0

      Some applications, for example, Zbrush, number the UV tiles with the lower left UV co-ordinate. That is, a UV tile [0,0]x(1,1) would use u0_v0 in its file name.

    • 1-based (Mudbox) - select this option if your UV co-ordinates start at 1

      Some applications, for example Mudbox, number the UV tiles with the upper right UV co-ordinate. That is, a UV tile [0,0]x(1,1) would use u1_v1 in its file name.

    • UDIM (Mari) - select this option if your UV co-ordinates are represented as a four-digit number using the formula 1000+(u+1+v*10)
    • Explicit Tiles - select this option to load each tile separately and enter the U and V values explicitly. For each tile, enter the values of the lower-left UV co-ordinate that the texture corresponds to.
    Note: The naming conventions listed above are the default settings for each application. Alternative conventions may be used.

    Maya uses tokens in the file path to parse the UV co-ordinates of each texture.

    After you have selected a UV Tiling Mode, the Image Name field is updated with tokens that indicate how Maya parses the filename:
    • 0-based (Zbrush) - u<u>_v<v>
    • 1-based (Mudbox) - u<U>_v<V>
    • UDIM (Mari) - <UDIM>

      • After parsing the UV co-ordinates, Maya indicates the number of UV tiles it has found within the specified path.

      Tip: If you mouse over the text indicating the number of UV tiles found, a tooltip appears indicating the UV range covered.

    If you are currently in textured mode, or switch to textured mode at this point, Maya does not automatically preview the UV tile textures in Viewport 2.0. To do so, you must manually generate the texture preview.

  4. Select a Preview Quality from the drop-down list.

    If you have a large texture set, you may want to select a lower quality preview to reduce the use of texture memory. You can choose to Disable Preview if you are using extremely large texture sets; or, if for any other reason, you do not want to preview the textures.

    Note: In Viewport 2.0, UV tile textures are baked to a single texture for preview. The resolution of this texture depends on the Preview Quality you select:
    • High Quality: 4k
    • Medium Quality: 2k
    • Low Quality: 1k
  5. Click Generate Preview and press 6 to visualize the tiles in textured mode (if you are not already in textured mode).

    If you have more than one set of UV tiles in your scene, you can generate the preview for all UV tile sets by selecting Renderer > Viewport 2.0 > and clicking Regenerate All UV Tile Preview Textures. The global setting respects the Preview Quality setting saved for each file node.

    If your textures have changed since the last time you clicked Generate Preview; for example, you have reloaded your textures, the button indicates Generate Preview* (in red) to alert you to re-generate the preview. This lets you make several changes to your texturing setup before waiting for a new texture preview.

By default, Maya does not load the UV tile textures in Viewport 2.0 when a scene is first opened. You can choose to preview your UV tiles in Viewport 2.0 upon scene load by selecting Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences to open the Preferences window, and enabling Generate UV tile previews on scene load in the Display section. If you do not modify your UV tiles, you can always preview your textures automatically upon scene load. However, if you modify your UV tiles, you must manually regenerate your preview again by clicking Generate Preview*.

Your settings in the Bake Resolution for Unsupported Texture Types (in the Render Settings window) does not have any effect on the display resolution.

A hard clamp is applied based on your Max Texture Resolution setting (in the Viewport 2.0 Options) after you select the Preview Quality setting. However, the clamp is ignored if the tiling data is not square; that is, the ratio of rows to columns of tiles is less than 0.5 or greater than 2.

Custom image file format

If your image file name has a custom format that does not match the available UV Tiling Mode, you can manually edit the tokens so Maya can correctly recognize the UV tiling sequence.

  1. Load the first of your UV tiles using the browse button beside the Image Name attribute.
  2. Select either the 0-based (Zbrush) or 1-based (Mudbox) UV Tiling mode and edit the tokens as necessary.

Loading separate images as UV tiles

You can load images one by one and specify the U and V co-ordinates for each one separately.

  1. Select the File node.
  2. In the Attribute Editor, load the first of your UV tiles using the Image Name attribute.
  3. Set the UV Tiling Mode to Explicit Tiles.
  4. Enter the U and V co-ordinates for the first texture you loaded.

    Enter the values of the lower-left UV co-ordinate that the texture corresponds to.

  5. Click Add Explicit Tile to add the next texture and enter its corresponding UV co-ordinates.
  6. Repeat as necessary for the remaining textures.

Using image sequences with UV tiling

When you select the Use Image Sequence option, Maya indicates with tokens, under Image Name, which part of the filename it interprets as the frame number, for example:

filename.u<u>_v<v>_<f>.tif

In this example, the first token represents the U value, the second token represents the V value, and the third token <f>, represents the frame number.

For each frame, Maya indicates the number of UV tiles it has found within the specified path.

Parent topic: Map and position textures