In this short article, we’ll take a look at a relatively new compressed texture format called Basis. Basis is developed by Binomial, LLC, a company founded by Rich Geldreich (of crunch fame) and Stephanie Hurlburt. Basis is unique among compression formats in that it emphasizes efficient transcoding between compressed formats. This means that a single …
Using Basis Universal Texture Compression with Metal Read More »
In this article, we will consider several GPU-friendly compressed texture formats. These formats allow us to trade some image quality for substantial improvements in disk usage and performance. In particular, we will look at the ETC2, PVRTC, and ASTC formats.
In this article we will learn about mipmapping, an important technique for rendering textured objects at a distance. We will find out why mipmapping is important, how it complements regular texture filtering, and how to use the blit command encoder to generate mipmaps efficiently on the GPU.
In this post, we’ll talk about some of the more advanced features of texturing in Metal. We’ll apply a cube map to a skybox to simulate a detailed environment surrounding the scene. We’ll also introduce a technique called cubic environment mapping to simulate reflection and refraction, to further enhance the realism of our virtual world.
Textures are a central topic in rendering. Although they have many uses, one of their primary purposes is to provide a greater level of detail to surfaces than can be achieved with vertex colors alone. In this post, we’ll talk about texture mapping, which helps us bring virtual characters to life. We’ll also introduce samplers, …