DDS Texture Compression Tools

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

It looks like you guys are getting some good use from the DDS compression tools. That's great!

If you have feature requests or find bugs, please let me know.

I post the latest version here:

http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO ... ion_plugin

I also maintain a mailing list to send out update notifications. Let me know if you want to be on that list.

There are some really cool pictures on this site.

-Doug Rogers
NVIDIA Developer Relations
doug@nvidia.com

[t00fri]

It looks like you guys are getting some good use from the DDS compression tools. That's great! :D

If you have feature requests or find bugs, please let me know.

I post the latest version here:

http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO ... ion_plugin

I also maintain a mailing list to send out update notifications. Let me know if you want to be on that list.

There are some really cool pictures on this site.

-Doug Rogers
NVIDIA Developer Relations
doug@nvidia.com

Great, I just exchanged about 10 mails with Doug and as you can see, he is very willing to offer help for us texture manipulators;-)

Notably, to extend nvdxt to 16k x 16k monster textures, at last!

Bye Fridger

[Rassilon]

Thanks Doug...Im hoping for better results in photoshop...for less artifact with these new tools using still the 8 bit architecture of adobe...but then I may still have to learn to install photoshops plugins in the gimp...or just get linux...Suppose its one of the downfalls of a OS originally made for business...Microsoft that is...

[jim]

Hi Doug,

Thanks for the great tools. But i have some wishes.

Please update the documentation or has nothing changed since version 5.01?
Is it possible to compile a windows version? Look at this tiny program (DXT Tool v1.0) and you know what i mean.

http://www.s-c-o-r-e.de/maptut/mod/002.htm

Maybe that a clean Win version is not as resource hungry as the DOS tools and works faster.

Does the lates Photoshop plugin really need DirectX 9 and why? I fear i crash my installation with this buggy DirectX 9.
I use Win98SE and Nvidea dos tools v5.41. I can maximal convert 8k textures but Fridger says that he can work with 16k textures under WinXP. Is there a chance for me that the 16k conversion works on my old system?

My system: Duron 900Mhz, 512 Mb, Geforce3 TI 200, Win98SE, DirectX8.1

Ras, i fear the artifacts are not caused by the compression tools i think the problem is Celestia under windows, windows itself or some other windows specific things.

Bye Jens

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

OK, I can update the documentation. There have been several changes worth documenting.

DirectX 9 should not be a problem installing. Games coming out soon will require it, so its only a matter of time before you submit

The texture size limitation should just be a memory limitation, assuming you don't resize. Resizing checks for <= 4K for width and height.
I didn't think anyone would make textures this big. This will be fixed when I post the next version.

The DOS version should use less memory than a windows version. I can't read German, so I don't know what the link is about. What happens in the DOS version when you use compress large textures.

-Doug Rogers
NVIDIA Developer Relations

[Guest]

Hi Doug,

Thank you for the fast response.

I use the commandline tools in a DOS window. I get this error messages if i try to compress a 16kx8k texture:

C:\temp\test>nvdxt -file test16k.tga -dxt1c
test16k.tga -->
This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.

or

C:\temp\test>nvdxt -file test16k.tif -dxt1c
test16k.tif --> Can't open input file 'C:\temp\test\test16k.tif'[GBM failed to read file]

When i use readdxt with a 16k DDS file i get a Windows error message that the application is closed because a invalid process and i can view a register print.

I hope this is usefull for you.

Now to the German programm, this is a simple graphical interface for your commandline tools. Here is a picture.



The idea was if it's possible to build a windows version of the tools that works similar like this maybe a stand alone version of the Photoshow plugin. This forum shows that people have today problems to open a file with a text editor and just the command line is to difficult for many people. Therfore a simple windows progamm would be very nice.

Bye Jens

[jim]

The last post was mine. Some thing is wrong with the login. I was logged out within one minute after login. But after the second login it works better.

Jens

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

Oh, you mean creating a little application that compresses textures?
dxtex that comes with DirectX does exactly that. It comes with the DirectX SDK here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/deta ... laylang=en

-Doug

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

About the other problems:

When the program aborts like that, it probably is running out of memory, but I will check.

The .tif loading should be working now. Let me know if it's still broken.


http://developer.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO ... ion_plugin

-Doug

[Logan5]

Hi guys, indeed these are wonderful plug ins and programs for DDS conversition.
I just have a small problem. When useing the nvidia plug in for photoshop, I cannot open nor save a DDS file at 16k. All other resolutions save just fine. Photoshop will start to save and just when it looks as if it is done (after about 2 min.) I get a program error. I have also installed the thumbnail viewer program, which crashes windows explorer when trying to view a 16k DDS file. Again the thumbnail viewer shows all other resolutions just fine, just the 16k ones.
I am running an Athlon 2600 with 640mb 2100 memory, with Windows XP SP1 and fully updated.
Now, is there another program that I can use to convert the 16k DDS texture to, lets say a jpg, so that I may work with them?
Thanks again to Doug.

[selden]

Doug,

Is there any possibility you could improve the locality in nvdxt?

On small memory systems it pages badly when processing large image files. In many programs this is caused by using the wrong subscript order, so the program is referencing only one word per page in the innermost loop. Of course, it's probably not so simple a problem in this case, but I can hope, can't I?

Thanks.

Logan5,

Please read Doug's earlier postings in this thread. They never anticipated that people would be working with such large images. You need to specify which version of the utilities you are using, since that problem is supposed to be fixed either in the current version or the next one. (Unfortunately Doug didn't specify a version number, so I don't know which version is supposed to include the fix.)

[Guest]

Hello Doug...welcome to Celestia...

I've a problem with my shallow water texture..at only 8k it's way too heavy at 40+ megs. I've used DXT1 and it halves the file size but the water blend becomes very pixelated.

I've also had a go with the command line tools but the dos box just disappeares after a split second...I'd rather use the photoshop plug-in...

I've seen that Fridger uses the DXT1c option but that isn't available from the save menu.

Any tips on this one?

Many thanks for your great tool...bh.

[bh]

I did log in...wasn't picked up.

[selden]

bh,

The DOS window should not disappear. Are you by any chance actually using the "Run" command? That would explain what you are seeing. The Run command window can't be used for command-line programs, only for program wich open and manage their own windows. nvdxt does not open any windows.

The "DOS command" window is what you need to use. Its icon is buried somewhere in the Start menu. It's in different places in different versions of Windows, so I usually use the Run window to start the "DOS" window:

Select the Start menu, Run icon
When its window opens, type into its "Open" field the three letter command
"cmd"

That will open a 24x80 terminal window on your screen which will stay open until you close it manually. Then in that "DOS" window you can type a sequence of nvdxt or other commands. (I put "DOS" in quotes because under Win2K and XP it isn't really running DOS: it's running a native Win32 command interpreter )

I hope this helps.

[t00fri]

Hello Doug...welcome to Celestia...

I've a problem with my shallow water texture..at only 8k it's way too heavy at 40+ megs. I've used DXT1 and it halves the file size but the water blend becomes very pixelated.

I've also had a go with the command line tools but the dos box just disappeares after a split second...I'd rather use the photoshop plug-in...

I've seen that Fridger uses the DXT1c option but that isn't available from the save menu.

Any tips on this one?

Many thanks for your great tool...bh.

DXT1c and DXT1a are not 'official' but rather nvdxt terminology only, in order to distinguish DXT1 formats that are just RGB (without alpha channel)<=> DXT1c and with /1bit/ alpha <=> DXT1a

Bye Fridger

[Guest]

Slightly offtopic:
It seems Macusers actually have a solution for using these textures, unfortunately I don't own any of the supported cards (ATI rage 128 pro). Just thought I'd post it though in case people didn't know.


GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc (Specification)
Provides additional texture compression functionality specific to S3's S3TC format (called DXTC in Microsoft's DirectX API), subject to all the requirements and limitations described by the extension GL_ARB_texture_compression, supporting DXT1, DXT3, and DXT5 texture compression formats.

System: Mac OS X v10.2.3 "Jaguar" and later
Renderers: Radeon, Radeon Mobility, Radeon 7500 Mobility, Radeon 8500, Radeon 9000 Pro, GeForce 2MX, GeForce 4MX, GeForce 3, GeForce 4Ti

http://developer.apple.com/opengl/extensions.html

Still I'd like to be able to manipulate .dds files in Photoshop for OS X, I haven't found a plug-in thusfar unfortunately. Probably has to do with directX being Windows only (?).

[julesstoop]

That was me %&^%&*(^% I obviously timed out :twisted:

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

The current tools posted should support large textures, but I still need to do some VTune profiling to see if compressing can be sped up. Filtering for MIP maps can take up a lot of time and should be disabled if you don't need them.

Is there a repository of large textures that I can use as test cases?

-Doug

[t00fri]

The current tools posted should support large textures, but I still need to do some VTune profiling to see if compressing can be sped up. Filtering for MIP maps can take up a lot of time and should be disabled if you don't need them.

Is there a repository of large textures that I can use as test cases?

-Doug

That's great news! Looking forward to trying the 'unlimited' tools out;-).

Since you probably are looking for 16k x 8k test textures, there are not too many around, unfortunately.
At

ftp://ftp.dasmirnov.net/astronomy/celestia/textures/

in the directory Pixel, you'll find 16k earth.dds and mars.dds textures. So you may test uncompressing and recompressing. Both are DXT1c in nvdxt terminology.

For smaller textures, what about my Texture Foundry site that is back up in operation since tonight after a recent hack of the shatters.net server.

http://www.celestiaproject.net/~t00fri/texfoundry.php4

Depending on whether you activate DXT support of your card;-) the site presents a list of *.dds.zip textures of various resolutions or the same textures as *.jpg, *.png. The dds files corresponding to *.png usually have an alpha channel and are correspondingly DXT3 compressed, the ones corresponding to *.jpg are DXT1c.

Bye Fridger

[John Van Vliet]

There are 8k maps on my site in .png and .dds 's (dxt3) made with the nVida comand line tool . an 8k map takes about 15 min. to conv. I still have not tryed the photoshop tool , thats next .