PVRTexToolCLI on linux doesn't support BC texture compression.

PowerVR Insider
1

PVR file format is great. It support three most common texture compression formats: etc, pvrtc and dxtc. As a result I choose it as the only internal texture format of my 3d engine. PVRTexTool of windows version is great too. It can compile most common texture format into pvr texture. However, when I deployed PVRTexToolCLI on linux , I found it could not convert texture into dxtc compression format. I’ve check the format supporting status with “PVRTexToolCLI -help f”. Obviously it doesn’t include bc* format. So maybe I have to comress bc* format with another tool. I’d like to know why and whether the format is going to be supported in the future.

2

Hi Tom,

Currently PVRTexTool only supports the Block Compression (BC) texture format on Windows platforms, this is because the compression algorithms used for BC are proprietary Microsoft technologies and therefore we cannot deploy the format to other platforms due to licensing.

Kind Regards,
Shaun

3

I suspect that after 16th of March 2018 it will be possible to add the BC formats to the non-windows versions.

4

This is still not present on the macOS build either. This means we can’t fully generate content with the CLI, or open and review desktop content (f.e. KTX with BC compression) with the GUI. BC has never been a proprietary Microsoft format, and patents from the ashes of S3 sold to trolls are now expired. Some PVR devices support BC formats, so the tools ommision of these format (on all but Windows) has limited our use of this tool.

5

Hi alecazam123,

As mentioned in the previous post BC texture format was a proprietary format and therefore we couldn’t deploy it to other platforms other than windows. The patent expired on 16th of March 2018.

We are planning on supporting the format on platforms other than Windows in the upcoming 20.2 release of PVRTextTool.

The 20.2 released is currently planned for September.

Thank you.
Regards,
Omar.

1 Like
6

That’s great to hear. Thanks for supplying a great cross-platform encoder and preview tool. I’ve wished that macOS Preview could do the things PVRTexTool did for ages.