DDS Texture Compression Tools

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

15 min! Ack!
I'll see what I can do.

-Doug

[t00fri]

15 min! Ack!
I'll see what I can do.

-Doug

Doug:

you claimed that your 5.51 tools version now should be able to handle 16k x8k textures. I disagree along with other users, who even used >1GB RAM and lots of swap.

The 16k *.tga textures are not even read.

Also, I really wonder why your tools are so incredibly slow. My own DXT1 converter based on DeVIL 1.65. works without problems with a 16kx8k texture and converts it into DXT1 in about 30 secs! With your nvdxt I also need > 15min (!) for converting a 'tiny';-) 8kx4k texture to DXT1....Did you really optimize all nested loops?

I carefully searched for quality differences and could not find much!

Bye Fridger

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

If I can't sped up the compression significantly, I'll add DevILs method as an alternate.

-Doug

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

I reduced the memory usage by half and added a quick compression option.

In nvdxt, the option is -quick

Hopefully, nvdxt can compress huge images now.
-Doug


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

[t00fri]

I reduced the memory usage by half and added a quick compression option.

In nvdxt, the option is -quick

Hopefully, nvdxt can compress huge images now.
-Doug


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

Sounds good! I'll get into testing with a 16k texture very soon.

What's the trade off in case of the -quick option in terms of image quality? Did you use the DevIL algorithm or what?

Bye Fridger

[Don. Edwards]

I may be a little late to chime in here but it doesn’t take me 15 minute to crunch an 8k texture, for me 5 minute at the most.
One thing I would like to see is better memory management under Windows XP. I have 1.5GB of DDR RAM on an AMD Athlon 2200XP and I still can’t crunch a 16k texture. I can start, but it runs no more than 30 seconds and crashes out. I have tried dxt1, dxt3 dxt5 to no avail. Maybe I am doing something wrong or I have the wrong commands in place. I am going to setup a stripped install of Win98 in hopes that will allow me to work on these big textures. But so far a 16k texture eludes me.

Don.
P.S.
Maybe someone can give me the proper command line info for working on a large texture like this. Maybe I am missing something? As I said I can make 8k textures till the cows come home.

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

I used something similar to DevIL, but I create several quantization candidates and take the closest one.

Most of the time spent on large textures is reading them in.

I'll try some 16k textures to verify that they can be compressed.
-Doug

[Don. Edwards]

Hey Doug,
Well supposedly 16k textures can be done because Fridger has done it many times and his system isn't the most up to date from what I understand. Although I believe he is using Linux part of the time I think he uses win98 for the texture compression. I can't remember all the info.
I was thinking is there a way to say take two .dds textures at 8k x 8k and combine then to a 16k x 8k. This might be one way to make a 16k texture if it can be done.

[bh]

Hello Doug...I'm experiencing a new problem with your photoshop plug-in. I can no longer open an 8k dds file. Trying to do so results in either a 'program error' message or a complete system crash. I can open 4k textures fine and I can also save an 8k dds - I just can't view them to edit, which rather defeats the object.

I've done nothing major to my setup as far as I'm aware...puzzled I am.

Windows XP Home Edition, 1.3 gig CPU, 256 ram, GForce 2.

Photoshop 6 and 7.

[Don. Edwards]

I can still open 8k dds files but photoshop has quit opening 16k dds textures altogether.

[t00fri]

Doug:

I still get an error with your 5.53 nvdxt when trying to read 16k x 8k texture.tga files with my 512MB of RAM and 10GB of virtual memory...

8k works as always, however, the -quick option is not reallly much faster. I also noted that your photoshop tool is /unable/ to convert 16bit/channel MOLA level graymaps (read in as *.raw files) into normal maps! This is a most serious limitation, since 8bit graymaps are simply inadequate for hires bumping!

Bye Fridger

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

nvdxt prints the status of what its doing now. When it reports "[Reading]", its reading in the file. For these huge images, most of the time (95%) is spent just reading in the image off the hard disk and one or two seconds compressing.


The photoshop plugin only reads and writes .dds format. Another plugin for .raw format would need to be written to read in the .raw format.

I'll try to reduce the memory footprint even more.

-Doug

[t00fri]

nvdxt prints the status of what its doing now. When it reports "[Reading]", its reading in the file. For these huge images, most of the time (95%) is spent just reading in the image off the hard disk and one or two seconds compressing.


The photoshop plugin only reads and writes .dds format. Another plugin for .raw format would need to be written to read in the .raw format.

I'll try to reduce the memory footprint even more.

-Doug

Photoshop natively supports *.raw format, hence the Mola 16bit elevation graymaps may be read in and displayed without problems after renaming *.img => *.raw. This is well known.

Your /normalmap/ plugin, however, does not work with 16bit/channel graymaps! That's where the problem is. 8bit bump maps are a very serious limitation though, since the result is often not smooth enough and leads to substantial artifacts in the 3d multi texture display.

As to reading in 16k textures with nvdxt, I get an error right away during the reading step. With my DevIL based dds conversion tool, reading in these big files is both fast and works without any problems on the same machine (under Linux though;-)).

Bye Fridger

[ElPelado]

i have installed the DDS Thumbnail viewer, but it doesnt work, OR i dont know how to make it work. in the documents is writen "Under the menu View, select Thumbnails", and i dont have that option. i am running windows 98 SE.
with the installers, there are also two registry files, what should i do with them?

[Don. Edwards]

Well I got it to work but it constantly crashs explorer.exe if you have any 16k dds textures. I ended up removing it. Its a nice thing to have but in the end its alot of trouble.

[ElPelado]

but how did you install it?

[Don. Edwards]

In the zip there is there 2 regidstry files and the installer. Run the installer and then double click the reg files. One is for visible alpha and the other is for hidden alpha chanel. double click the one you want try.

[ElPelado]

ok thanks.
i didn't want to open the registry files without knowing if i have to do it or not, my computer has many problems, and i didnt want more. but now that you told me, i will do it.

[Doug Rogers (NVIDIA)]

I need to update the thumbnail viewer for 16k .dds files. That should solve the windows problem.
-Doug

[bh]

Hello Doug...I've downloaded your latest plug-in for photoshop, with the dll set. Photoshop struggles to start, saying 'd3d9.dll not found..'

I've trid to download this dll but I keep getting timed out on my download. (this is happening with other downloads too). Zip files only.

Any help on this one?

Regards ...bh.