Texture compression?
So how does it work? And where can I get all required information?
Until now I always used PNG's for my textures. Now I have read some stuff about DXT1, DXT5, 3Dc etc. What does it mean?
I have also downloaded some DDS nvidia tools plugin for photoshop. I don't know how to use it properly, cause I do not understand all the terms used in the option window.
All I found out is that DDS format is like five times bigger than PNG. So what are the pros?
If you guys would have some more information for me relating this matter, I would be very happy.
Grtz, Dr S
Until now I always used PNG's for my textures. Now I have read some stuff about DXT1, DXT5, 3Dc etc. What does it mean?
I have also downloaded some DDS nvidia tools plugin for photoshop. I don't know how to use it properly, cause I do not understand all the terms used in the option window.
All I found out is that DDS format is like five times bigger than PNG. So what are the pros?
If you guys would have some more information for me relating this matter, I would be very happy.
Grtz, Dr S
Replies
http://udn.epicgames.com/Two/UnrealTexturing.html
A Direct Draw Surface or .DDS is a texture that is highly optimized to work with Direct X. Most modern game engines use this file format as again it is made to work with Direct X.
DXT1, DXT5, 3Dc etc are the different formats that are used based off of what you need that texture to do. For example a DXT1 is a diffuse or normal or spec or whatever you need with out any alpha information stored in the image. A DXT5 is that same image just with an alpha channel added to it. There are DXT3 and a few more that I can not think of right now but these simply change the way the alpha is compressed.(DXT5 best alpha compression).
Where are you looking at the size of the .DDS in windows explorer? I know for a fact that when using a .DDS in a game engine like unreal it will be smaller than a .PNG but I can not say for sure what it will be outside an engine.
Generally most textures that are imported in to a game engine are converted to some format that the engine reads.This format that the texture gets converted into is optimized to reduce the image size while keeping pixelation to a minimum. I know that in Unreal you don't have to, although you can, import a .DDS. Instead you can import a .BMP or .PNG as once imported unreal will convert the image into .DDS format for you. But this is just for unreal and I don't know how other engines do it but it should be about the same.