I will gladly answer that, but let me round up a couple references for you.

Meanwhile, while slowly waking up this morning, I thought about doing a "wireframe" comparison that would showcase the geometric (polygon) differences.





Regarding the png-v-jpg discussion...  Yes, jpg can cause a lot of "banding," which I think tends to be even more visible in things like height maps.  I guess I'm in the habit of converting png to jpg for things like posting this picture into the forum.  I realize very few of us use dial-up modems anymore, but it's an old habit of compressing my images when I don't see much (if any) difference.  But if I see any value in a "better" format, I have no hesitation in using it, even if it is larger.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

justaviking,

I'm seeing the difference better now in the wireframe close-up. When I saw the (previous) medium size shot, I was in bed with my trusty Samsung 10 inch tablet. I  couldn't tell the difference then. But on a big screen now, I can see a little difference in the medium shot. But it's not obvious. You have to look at it closely. But in the close-up, it's obvious. So I guess this technique doesn't apply when you do close-ups...



My latest movie THE GOLDEN MAN, and a few others: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIl1EqVCKitZzLqaNnLK0BA

"How do you project a picture of plates onto a cylinder?"

@Argus,

Ah, such a wonderful question.
The joy (and agony) of using iClone is there is always, always, always so much more to learn.
You soon understand why it takes teams of people to make "real" movies.


This is risky, doing this when I'm away from my iClone computer, but I will try to give you some step-by-step instructions that will allow you to experience the process without getting bogged down in the details.
This should only take you about 5 minutes to walk through, and if you've never done it before, it would be very illuminating.  (Then add another hour for playing around with other shapes and stuff.)

STEP 0 - FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPT:
Keeping this simple, the "texture files" are a flattened, or unwrapped version of the surface of the prop.
For example, peel an orange, lay the peels flat on your table, and photograph it.  Now you have a 2D picture of the skin that belongs to the 3D orange.
If you took a paper cylinder, cut it, and laid it out flat, that is the basic idea we'll work with here.


STEP 1 - PREPARE THE PROJECT:
> Start a new iClone project
> In the "props" area of your "content," add a 3D Cylinder
> Be sure the cylinder is selected (it should be, since you just added it)
> In the "Material" tab on the right-hand side of the screen, you will see the textures available...
-> Base Color, Normal, Metallic...(if PBR shader, otherwise you'll see Diffuse, Bump, Specular...)
-> I will assume PBR, thus "Base color," but this will work fine with Diffuse

STEP 2 - CREATE A STARTING POINT:
> Click on Base Color to be sure it is selected
-> It should have two circles and a rectangle, similar to my image at the bottom of this post
> Click the "Save" (floppy disk icon) below the textures to save it to a file

STEP 3 - ARTISTIC TALENT:
> Use something simple, like Microsoft Paint and EDIT the Base Color file you saved
> Draw something on the circles, like a happy face
> Draw some horizontal dark gray lines across the rectangle
> Save the file

STEP 4 - APPLY ARTWORK TO THE GEOMETRY:
> From a Windows Explorer window, DRAG your edited Base Color file onto the Base Color icon in iClone
> Viola!!!!  You should now see something that almost looks like a stack of plates, with a smiley logo on the top plate

NOTES:
a) Different cylinders can be "unwrapped" differently, so the "Top" and "Bottom" circles may be different.
b) The process I outlined is not the "best" way to do this, but it should help you understand the basic concepts.
c) The texture maps are also called UV Maps.  Why?  The geometry is in 3D space, X, Y, and Z.  So on these 2D texture maps, we don't want to call the horizontal and vertical axis X and Y because that might cause confusion, so they are called U (horizontal) and V (vertical) axis.  That way we know we are talking about the 2D (UV) skin rather than the 3D (XYZ) model.  Hey, that's the way programmers think.
d) ASK ABOUT THE "EDIT" BUTTON (Launch?) near the Save icon you used above.  It can launch a tool like Photoshop or GIMP.  That's still not the best way to do this, but it's better than what we did above.
e) There are many tools available to help with this, and some will allow you to paint directly on the 3D model and then will generate the 2D texture files for you.
r) There is much more to this topic.  So much more.  For example, I also painted a bump/normal map to help give the illusion of depth on the sides, between the plates.

Here is a hand-crafted example of a UV map for a cylinder:

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Absolutely.

a) I purposely used a rather low-resolution texture map
b) My geometry is very low-poly, so you can see the facets (flat areas) when you get up close
c) I did not do a great job of "painting" on it
d) It is merely a visual approximation of a stack of plates.......

The question always is, "How much detail is needed?"

I suspect even my somewhat sloppy, overly-low-res stack of plates would probably be sufficient for any scene where they are in the background.

However, sometimes you need better quality.  And sometimes you need a "Hero Prop" that will get a lot of close-ups and screen time.  A knife laying on the counter, in the background, is nothing special.  In some cases, it could even be painted (composited) onto the counter, complete with fake shadows, especially if you have a static camera angle.  But if the detective picks it up, looks closely at it, and we seen an extreme close-up where we see the criminal's fingerprints on it, then you need to invest much more into that particular prop.

Welcome to 3D modeling, texturing, rendering, lighting, art direction, animation....   or as we call it, using iClone.  ;)

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Right, and I've mentioned it before in this thread, but nearly ANY prop you can think of, unless it's directly in your character's hands, will almost always be fine at low res.  That's because, as you've already noted, you can't see much (if any) different in a long or even somewhat medium shot.  As you move to close in, though, you will nearly ALWAYS be blurring out the background (this is such a standard technique that breaking it requires a VERY specific reason and will almost always be noticed, and not in a good way).

IOW, we blur our the backgrounds as we do our closeups of our characters because they, after all, are what is important.  Having nice sharp props at close range is only useful when those props are going to be used in the action.  Even if a character is eating, for example, you never see a closeup of their plates or food (it would fall apart in iClone anyway -- food is never very convincing animated).  And their knife or fork?  Unless they are using it to gesture (and even then) you don't need a "hero prop" as Dennis alludes to, because they will be in motion.

But don't let me convince you -- just watch any movie or television show, even in HD, for a few minutes and you'll see what I'm talking about.  The only time you need a highly detailed prop is for a closeup for some significant reason (it's either a MacGuffin or it IS a crucial plot point information).  The rest of the time you don't really care at all what they look like -- they will be blurred or so far away you couldn't tell the difference (and it IS eye-opening to be on the set of a film where the props are so lo-res they wouldn't fool a child -- but they do fool the camera).

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Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor
Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

If not already mentioned: don't forget the benefits of real-time smooth, which would make Viking's plates even look better (I think).

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I understand the need to bake all substances at the end, when you're sure they are definite. But in the meantime, when I'm working on my scene every day, applying modifications, I still have to cope with horrible waiting times for it to load...






My latest movie THE GOLDEN MAN, and a few others: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIl1EqVCKitZzLqaNnLK0BA

And just to bring in another point that has been discussed in another thread.
Note: This is probably overkill for something as simple as a knife, I'm just using it as an example for the point for consideration when making videos.

If you do have the detective picking up the knife to investigate it then that would be a very short amount of time compared to the rest of the video.
Having the knife modelled in high detail in the whole video is a higher amount resources consumed just so you can have that short bit where the detective picks it up.

So it might be worth considering creating 2 projects for the scene.
1 with the knife as an image and 1 with the knife as a model. Seeing as the examination of the knife would be a closeup then the scene would only need enough of the full sceen to fill what the camera sees while the detective picks it up, examines it and puts it down. This is one of the things I consider when breaking my video up into several projects and put their rendered video's together in my video editor. I use Hitfilm




i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Another thing you might consider for the knife is in the project where he picks it up have the model invisible in the characters hand and the image of it visible on the table.
When the detective picks it up make the model visible and the image invisible. when he puts it back make the model invisible again and the texture visible.
That is something I learnt from warlord as a way to make it easier to animate a character picking something up

The point here is that way you can create a scene with simplified modelling texturing for use in all projects used to make your full video.
And then add the detailed item into the project where it is needed.
Also, the point behind why I am saying all of this is as examples of ways to make it so your project doesn't take 15 minutes to load
More importantly, animating everything in a single project can extremely irritate you when things start to go wrong





i7-3770 3.4GHz CPU 16 GB Ram   
GeForce GTX1080 TI 11GB
Windows 10 Pro 64bit

Good idea. How about the Level of detail feature in the Preference section? Is that worth considering?




My latest movie THE GOLDEN MAN, and a few others: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIl1EqVCKitZzLqaNnLK0BA