Texture group

The Texture group lets you select a color texture and map it over the mesh.

Texture Layer pop-up

Selects the layer in the current comp to use as texture. This can be any layer on the Timeline, including text, shape and video layers as well as Adobe Illustrator files.

NOTE: When using a text layer as a Texture layer, be sure that your text size is large and that you choose the Texture Filter> Linear setting for smoother anti-aliased edges on the text.

Another way to set the texture within Mir is to assign a layer in the Timeline. Ideally, you will want to precomp your texture layer, then drag it into the Timeline and hide its visibility. The colors and animation within your custom precomp texture layer will be reflected in the Mir plane. This can produce some very interesting results when combined with the Fractals controls.

Textures take up memory from the GPU, so try to keep them as small as possible. They are supported in that the pixel can be fully On or fully Off in the texture. Be careful with layers that have semi-transparent pixels. These will work okay if you’re in the Density shader mode with the Blend mode set to Add. But Phong mode doesn’t really support semi transparent textures and this could cause artifacting on the edges of your layer.

You may need to adjust the size of the Mir plane when using a custom texture layer to get the desired results that match your original layer. Again, turning down the Fractal Amplitude is helpful when trying to accurately adjust this layer.

Texture Layer with a precomped text layer.

Texture Filter pop-up

Lets you choose a Linear setting which can assist in smoothing out the texture by sub-sampling inside of the texture and averaging out the pixels. The Multisample control under Shader may help with smoothing as well, if anti-aliasing is occurring.

There are two Texture Filter modes:

- Nearest: This refers to how the image is scaled up in relation to the mesh. Nearest means no filtering of pixels is done, instead only the nearest pixel is always chosen. It should be used when the texture layer is about the same size in pixels as the mesh but has text or something similar that must be clearly read. Some unwanted jagged edges could occur if the selected layer is much smaller than the mesh or when using text as a Texture layer.
- Linear: Linear sampling averages the layer’s pixels when scaling up to create smoother gradients within the image and prevent antialiasing. When set to Linear, Mir will sub-sample inside of the texture and average out the pixels.

Texture Coordinates pop-up

Lets you map the texture onto a particular coordinate of the mesh plane. By default it sets to X,Y, but you can set it to Noise Z to change the way the texture layer is mapped on the mesh.

There are two Texture Coordinates modes:

- Regular (X, Y): Default setting. Maps a rectangular texture onto the rectangular mesh.
- X, Noise Z: Places the texture by height according to how strong the Fractal is. This maps the texture on the regular X coordinate of the mesh, and the fractal's Z displacement is used for the Y coordinate. If the texture is composed of horizontal lines, with this mode it becomes a ‘height-field’ texture map.

Texture Scale X, Y

Lets you create smaller repeated patterns of the texture map for greater detail in the texture. For example, at a value of 5, the texture will be repeated 5 times on that axis.