research-article

Texture compression of light maps using smooth profile functions

Authors:

Per Wennersten,

Michael Doggett,

Tomas Akenine-MöllerAuthors Info & Claims

HPG '10: Proceedings of the Conference on High Performance Graphics

Pages 143 - 152

Published: 25 June 2010 Publication History

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.

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Cited By

Öztürk BAkyüz A(2017)Semi-dynamic light mapsACM SIGGRAPH 2017 Posters10.1145/3102163.3102202(1-2)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3102163.3102202
Kämpe VSintorn EDolonius DAssarsson U(2016)Fast, Memory-Efficient Construction of Voxelized ShadowsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2016.253995522:10(2239-2248)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2016.2539955
Kämpe VSintorn EAssarsson UKeyser JSander PSubr KWei L(2015)Fast, memory-efficient construction of voxelized shadowsProceedings of the 19th Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games10.1145/2699276.2699284(25-30)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2699276.2699284
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Texture compression of light maps using smooth profile functions
1. Information systems
  1. Data management systems
    1. Data structures
      1. Data layout
        Data compression

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Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

HPG '10: Proceedings of the Conference on High Performance Graphics

June 2010

189 pages

General Chairs:
Justin Hensley
AMD
,
Philipp Slusallek
DFKI & Saarland University, Germany
,
Program Chairs:
David McAllister
NVIDIA
,
Christiaan Gribble
Grove City College

Sponsors

SIGGRAPH: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
EUROGRAPHICS: The European Association for Computer Graphics

Publisher

Eurographics Association

Goslar, Germany

Publication History

Published: 25 June 2010

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Research-article

Conference

HPG'10

Sponsor:

SIGGRAPH
EUROGRAPHICS

HPG'10: High Performance Graphics

June 25 - 27, 2010

Saarbrucken, Germany

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Overall Acceptance Rate 15 of 44 submissions, 34%

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Citations

Cited By

Öztürk BAkyüz A(2017)Semi-dynamic light mapsACM SIGGRAPH 2017 Posters10.1145/3102163.3102202(1-2)Online publication date: 30-Jul-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3102163.3102202
Kämpe VSintorn EDolonius DAssarsson U(2016)Fast, Memory-Efficient Construction of Voxelized ShadowsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2016.253995522:10(2239-2248)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TVCG.2016.2539955
Kämpe VSintorn EAssarsson UKeyser JSander PSubr KWei L(2015)Fast, memory-efficient construction of voxelized shadowsProceedings of the 19th Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics and Games10.1145/2699276.2699284(25-30)Online publication date: 27-Feb-2015
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2699276.2699284
Sintorn EKämpe VOlsson OAssarsson U(2014)Compact precomputed voxelized shadowsACM Transactions on Graphics10.1145/2601097.260122133:4(1-8)Online publication date: 27-Jul-2014
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2601097.2601221
SchäFer HSüíMuth JDenk CStamminger M(2012)Technical sectionComputers and Graphics10.1016/j.cag.2011.12.00136:3(193-200)Online publication date: 1-May-2012
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cag.2011.12.001
Strom JWennersten POwens JPharr MDachsbacher CMark WPantaleoni J(2011)Lossless compression of already compressed texturesProceedings of the ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on High Performance Graphics10.1145/2018323.2018351(177-182)Online publication date: 5-Aug-2011
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2018323.2018351

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