ks_LODTexture plugin 0.1.0 for Maya (maya plugin)

Features:
Scales maya textures of selected objects in the current viewport (nurbs or polygon objects) down and sets them in the shader to save memory when rendering large scenes.
Lets you select all objects in or off the current viewport (usefull if you want to reduce textures used in reflection objects off camera and further scene optimisation).

• Provides relative (by percent) and absolute scaling (fixed pixel width).
• You can choosee to keep the original image format for LOD textures or convert them to. iff. Creates attributes at texture nodes with file path per LOD.
• Option to automatically restore scene (or selected objects) to full resolution textures.
  
• Option to remove LOD attributes from scene.

• If texture scaling fails for any reason the file is added to an Error-bin in the Hypershade.

Limitations:

• No support for mentalray and animated textures yet, mentalray shaders work
• if shaders are assigned to different (selected and unselected) objetcs textures get scaled down anyways

Usage:

To create Texture LODs:

• If you are using a texture directory other than "sourceimages" in your project directory please set it in the workspace (File > Project > Edit Current)
  
• Make an object selection.
  
• If you want to add on/off screen objects in current viewport and hit the "Select add off screen objects" or "Select add objects visible in camera" button.
  
• Select your scale properties and prefered image format, hit the "scale textures down" button.
  
• Selected objects are automatically assigned to a new display layer to make it easier to reselect them.

To restore to LOD1/full resolution:

• hit "Restore textures (original resolution)" button.
• "Remove LOD Attributes" removes the dynamic attributes from the file nodes but does NOT reset the textures to LOD1 in the file nodes, it just keeps the current texture.

If you use this for a project please drop me a line.

Install:
Copy ks_LODTextureGUI.mel in you script directory and LODTextures .mll into the plugin directory
(i.e. C:/Programs/Autodesk/Maya2008/bin/plug-ins).