Hello again! This is pretty much a more detailed copy/paste from this post about making pixel art textures for 3D models and using said models in UDK. Since Googling my problem gave me three pages of useless information before I dug up the answer, I figured I'd write a fresh post specifically about this issue in the hopes someone else will be able to find it when they also Google the problem. Luckily, it's a very simple fix once you figure out which option is messing things up!
Please note that I'm running Maya 2013, so I cannot say for sure this will help with older versions.
"Help! Maya is blurring my textures so bad that my renders look like they've been smeared in Vaseline!"
This is because Maya is dumb and just assumes you want an ugly filter on any images you use in your shaders. To remedy this, click on the shader you're using as your texture and follow its color node until you get to the image's settings. At the top of these settings, there is an option called "filter type." Set that bastard to "off" and you should suddenly have nice, crisp renders!
 |
| Default is "blurry as mud" it seems... |
To get the same effect in your viewport, hit the "shading" menu in the viewport's options, click on the little box next to "hardware texturing," and set the filter there to "unfiltered." Better? Good!
 |
| Ooh, such a sharp texture now! |
I hope this helps anyone who is looking for this information. I'm not sure how I even managed to find it, honestly, as it was buried deep in an archived thread from a few years ago. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to redo some truly terrible renders...
Updated 26 Jan, 2014 I cannot seem to find a good combination of settings in the render options that fit multiple resolutions. For the above project using 128*128 textures, I think I just used Maya Software with "edge anti-aliasing" turned to the highest quality. However, for my current project using 32*32 textures, Maya Software is leaving huge pixel-wide lines on the model, but Mental Ray is working fine with just about every setting I try. I would recommend just trying them all until something looks good, unfortunately. Let me know if you find a good "catch-all" rendering method!
