New Texture Algorithm/Program Reduces Texture Sizes By 70% [face_stunned]

[Sanborn]

Hello digital distribution.....

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/2006/10...be_70_smaller/

"One of the most interesting talks at London’s GDC (Games Developers Conference) this week came form one of the lesser known companies called Allegorithmic, who claim they will be able to reduce texture file sizes in games by up to 70%.

Their new programs, that they hope development artists will soon be using as an industry standard, are called ProFX and MaP Zone 2. Their ambition is to keep the graphical quality of game textures at the same standards as current games, whilst dramatically reducing the amount of data required for the game to work.

The implications of such a technology would be far reaching. As the current trend of digital distribution gains momentum a huge emphasis is being placed on games being made smaller and thus downloadable quicker. Their claim is that the current tool of choice for most games artists, Adobe Photoshop, is not ideally suited to making textures for games.

I was doubtful of this technology; however the company ran a demo that persuaded me otherwise. In the demo they had a bathroom full of beautiful textures, then with the flick of a button the bathroom took a more hellish look – all the while the textures looked the equal of Half Life 2.

The next demo was of a game that is due to come out for the XBOX Live Arcade called ‘Roboblitz’. Due to the requirement to get the game under 50MB, the developers needed to keep the textures as small in filesize as possible. Using the new texture system the overall size for all the textures was less than 280KB – watching the game (which runs on the Unreal 3 engine) I was amazed.

Confused by the fact that I hadn’t heard about this technology before, I spoke to one of the men behind it directly - Dr Sébastien Deguy. He assured me that there were no catches with his system, that if a game contained 1GB of textures he would be able to reduce that to 300MB and lose no quality. When I asked why everyone wasn’t using the program at the moment he explained it was due to people needing to be retrained in learning a new system. He was optimistic however, that soon all games companies will be using their new texture tools.

So what are the implications for you and I? In terms of traditionally packaged games that come in boxes, there probably won’t be much difference. Dr Deguy argues that if textures are smaller in file size and easier to create, then next-generation companies will be able to create even more textures for the games. We may then see a big leap forward in how richly detailed games are in the future as they triple the variety of textures the game includes.

The biggest impact however will be the benefits this will have to digital distribution. Games with texture quality and diversity matching Half Life 2 may soon be available in minutes of downloading rather than hours – for gamers this can only be a good thing."

Edit: It looks like this is some kind of weird procedural texture creator from what I can tell.....

[nn_step]

basically they are saying the next generation of graphics is going to be more efficiently coded...

[eXceeded]

yes , finally no more brute force approach needed from GPU manufacturers IF this gets support from developers.

[uOpt]

When I asked why everyone wasn’t using the program at the moment he explained it was due to people needing to be retrained in learning a new system. He was optimistic however, that soon all games companies will be using their new texture tools.

Whoha.

So this doesn't need any support from the hardware? That would mean the textures are only smaller on disk, but not in video memory. I have a couple extra GB disk space. Video memory I would care about.

And what about "new tools". Current textures require no tools at all. They are just digital images that you stuff into your graphics API. Done.

This story is holding back a whole lot.

And I suspect that this Doctor will "possibly" have royalty fees of one kind of anything on this new technology.

[erwinz]

nice

[STEvil]

Sounds familiar. Could be they finally got off their butts and are using same/similar techniques as used by "demo" makers.

[exhausted mule]

Whoha.

So this doesn't need any support from the hardware? That would mean the textures are only smaller on disk, but not in video memory. I have a couple extra GB disk space. Video memory I would care about.

And what about "new tools". Current textures require no tools at all. They are just digital images that you stuff into your graphics API. Done.

This story is holding back a whole lot.

And I suspect that this Doctor will "possibly" have royalty fees of one kind of anything on this new technology.

this has many benefits uopt. the data being sent to the gpu for example would be smaller and would require less processing due to the texture having fewer bits of imformation.

level's would load faster, a single frame would render that much quicker... ect ect ect.


or. they could just triple the amount or quality of the textures as they stated in the article.

[Major_A]

Sounds familiar. Could be they finally got off their butts and are using same/similar techniques as used by "demo" makers.

No kidding these 2GB demos aren't that attractive. I had to download the Call Of Juarez demo through bit torrent. Make the demo where people like me, aka 512/128, can get the demo in a hour.

[uOpt]

this has many benefits uopt. the data being sent to the gpu for example would be smaller and would require less processing due to the texture having fewer bits of imformation.

I don't think so. He cannot teach the GPU to read his new texture format.

Or is the guy talking about some kind of mechanism that reduces actual resolution and looks like more resolution? The useless article doesn't say one bit about it.

level's would load faster, a single frame would render that much quicker... ect ect ect.

Levels load faster, yes. Frames rendered faster, no.

or. they could just triple the amount or quality of the textures as they stated in the article.

On disk, but not in video RAM.

[XS Janus]

Man I seriously doubt you can persuade game developers to use anything more efficient if they have to pay for it.
Just look at all that new GPU hardware that is comming up.

They will just go the easier roete and raise their slacking to a whole new level
________
Hemp

[J-Mag]

Man I seriously doubt you can persuade game developers to use anything more efficient if they have to pay for it.
Just look at all that new GPU hardware that is comming up.

Developers license all sorts of technology when they code new applications, this is no different. How do you think Havok stays in business? They are essentially giving you tools for more efficient physics...