Friday 30 May 2014

etcpak 0.3

New major version, new features:
  • Ability to create mipmaps (only POT, not in benchmark mode).
  • Optional dithering of input image.
  • Small quality improvements at basically no cost.
Image minification algorithm used for generating mipmaps is stupid simple, but it already beats the implementation in PVRTexTool:
Left: PVRTexTool, Right: etcpak
Notice the high frequency artifacts present in the PVRTexTool image, particularly near the eyes of parrots. etcpak generates smoother and more natural look. Further refinements will be able to improve the image quality even more.

Dithering basically improves the appearance of gradients or smooth areas in photos:
Left: no dithering, Right: dithering enabled
It comes at a small cost however. Here are the timings for normal compression:
$ x64/Release/etcpak.exe 8192.png -b
Image load time: 1352.646 ms
Mean compression time for 50 runs: 630.855 ms
And this is the run with dithering enabled:

$ x64/Release/etcpak.exe 8192.png -b -d
Image load time: 1312.084 ms
Mean compression time for 50 runs: 744.394 ms
Download: https://bitbucket.org/wolfpld/etcpak/downloads