Texture compression of light maps using smooth profile functions
(2010) High Performance Graphics, 2010 p.143-152- Abstract
- Light maps have long been a popular technique for visually rich real-time rendering in games. They typically contain smooth color gradients which current low bit rate texture compression techniques, such as DXT1 and ETC2, do not handle well. The application writer must therefore choose between doubling the bit rate by choosing a codec such as BC7, or accept the compression artifacts, neither of which is desirable. The situation is aggravated by the recent popularity of radiosity normal maps, where three light maps plus a normal map are used for each surface. We present a new texture compression algorithm targeting smoothly varying textures, such as the light maps used in radiosity normal mapping. On high-resolution light map data from real... (More)
- Light maps have long been a popular technique for visually rich real-time rendering in games. They typically contain smooth color gradients which current low bit rate texture compression techniques, such as DXT1 and ETC2, do not handle well. The application writer must therefore choose between doubling the bit rate by choosing a codec such as BC7, or accept the compression artifacts, neither of which is desirable. The situation is aggravated by the recent popularity of radiosity normal maps, where three light maps plus a normal map are used for each surface. We present a new texture compression algorithm targeting smoothly varying textures, such as the light maps used in radiosity normal mapping. On high-resolution light map data from real games, the proposed method shows quality improvements of 0.7 dB in PSNR over ETC2, and 2.8 dB over DXT1, for the same bit rate. As a side effect, our codec can also compress many standard images (not light maps) with better quality than DXT1/ETC2. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/1653355
- author
- Rasmusson, Jim LU ; Ström, Jacob ; Wennersten, Per ; Doggett, Michael LU and Akenine-Möller, Tomas LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2010
- type
- Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding
- publication status
- published
- subject
- host publication
- [Host publication title missing]
- pages
- 10 pages
- publisher
- Eurographics - European Association for Computer Graphics
- conference name
- High Performance Graphics, 2010
- conference location
- Saarbrucken, Germany
- conference dates
- 2010-06-25 - 2010-06-27
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:80052433970
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 037b110c-e24c-41a1-aeef-04a95c0bcb10 (old id 1653355)
- alternative location
- http://fileadmin.cs.lth.se/graphics/research/papers/2010/lmc/
- date added to LUP
- 2016-04-04 11:20:56
- date last changed
- 2022-03-15 23:04:39
@inproceedings{037b110c-e24c-41a1-aeef-04a95c0bcb10, abstract = {{Light maps have long been a popular technique for visually rich real-time rendering in games. They typically contain smooth color gradients which current low bit rate texture compression techniques, such as DXT1 and ETC2, do not handle well. The application writer must therefore choose between doubling the bit rate by choosing a codec such as BC7, or accept the compression artifacts, neither of which is desirable. The situation is aggravated by the recent popularity of radiosity normal maps, where three light maps plus a normal map are used for each surface. We present a new texture compression algorithm targeting smoothly varying textures, such as the light maps used in radiosity normal mapping. On high-resolution light map data from real games, the proposed method shows quality improvements of 0.7 dB in PSNR over ETC2, and 2.8 dB over DXT1, for the same bit rate. As a side effect, our codec can also compress many standard images (not light maps) with better quality than DXT1/ETC2.}}, author = {{Rasmusson, Jim and Ström, Jacob and Wennersten, Per and Doggett, Michael and Akenine-Möller, Tomas}}, booktitle = {{[Host publication title missing]}}, language = {{eng}}, pages = {{143--152}}, publisher = {{Eurographics - European Association for Computer Graphics}}, title = {{Texture compression of light maps using smooth profile functions}}, url = {{http://fileadmin.cs.lth.se/graphics/research/papers/2010/lmc/}}, year = {{2010}}, }