Google and Binomial have announced a partnership to open source the Basis Universal texture codec to improve the performance of transmitting images on the web and within desktop and mobile applications, while maintaining GPU efficiency. This release fills an important gap in the graphics compression ecosystem and complements earlier work in Draco geometry compression.
The Basis Universal texture format is 6-8 times smaller than JPEG on the GPU, yet is a similar storage size as JPEG – making it a great alternative to current GPU compression methods that are inefficient and don’t operate cross platform – and provides a more performant alternative to JPEG/PNG. It creates compressed textures that work well in a variety of use cases across games, virtual & augmented reality, maps, photos, small-videos, and more.
From the Github page:
QuoteBasis Universal is a "supercompressed" GPU texture and texture video compression system that outputs a highly compressed intermediate file format (.basis) that can be quickly transcoded to a wide variety of GPU texture compression formats: PVRTC1 4bpp RGB, BC7 mode 6 RGB, BC1-5, ETC1, and ETC2. We will be adding ASTC RGB or RGBA, BC7 mode 4/5 RGBA, and PVRTC1 4bpp RGBA next. Basis files support non-uniform texture arrays, so cubemaps, volume textures, texture arrays, mipmap levels, video sequences, or arbitrary texture "tiles" can be stored in a single file. The compressor is able to exploit color and pattern correlations across the entire file, so multiple images with mipmaps can be stored very efficiently in a single file.
The system's bitrate depends on the quality setting and image content, but common usable bitrates are .3-1.25 bits/texel. .basis files are typically 10-25% smaller than using RDO texture compression of the internal texture data stored in the .basis file followed by LZMA. The current system is what we've been calling the "baseline" system, which is designed to reach all the GPU formats. The next major step is to extend the system to allow for much higher quality for the ASTC and BC7 texture formats.
Read the Google blog post announcement to learn more.
