Texture > Create File Switch

Introduction

zFileSwitch allows specifying separate low- and high-resolution paths for a texture. The low-res one can be used in the viewport, to reduce memory usage and scene load times, and the high-res one can be used in renders.

Usage

Add a file switch node to files with Texture > Create File Switch.

In the attribute editor, set the high-res and low-res texture paths. Note that if one doesn't exist, the other will be used automatically.

Toggle Use High Res to switch the current texture. To do this automatically, create a render setup. Right-click the render setup layer and select Import User Templates > zFileSwitch. This will import settings to set Use High Res only during renders.

Click Refresh to reload the selected texture.

Attributes

output - The currently selected path. This should be connected to the fileTextureName attribute of a file node.
highResolution - A path to the high-resolution texture.
lowResolution - A path to the low-resolution texture.
useHighRes - If set, the high-res texture will be used. Otherwise, the low-res one will be used.
override - If set to "Off", useHighRes will be used normally. If "Force high-res" or "Force low-res" is selected, the given texture will be used, ignoring useHighRes. This allows switching to one of the two textures without disconnecting useHighRes.

Limitations

File textures can't reload their textures if their path attribute is connected. This is a bug in the file node, not zFileSwitch. Use Refresh in the zFileSwitch attribute editor instead.
Not all rendering features handle render setup local render overrides. If this isn't supported, the render setup won't switch off the viewport override. Render Sequence does support this. You can also use a separate render setup for rendering if needed.
Paths will show up twice in the file editor, since it still shows paths for file nodes even if the path is a connected attribute.