Anatomy of a Texture

#1

Post by Agentlien » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

I just uploaded a new article describing how a modern video game texture is stored in graphics memory, why it's done this way, and how it may differ between platforms.

It is called Anatomy of a Texture.

Anatomy of a Texture
agentlien.github.io

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#2

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#3

Post by doormatt » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

Fantastic read! Not even a hint of LLMisms.

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#4

Post by Agentlien » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 4:09 PM UTC

doormatt wrote: post #3

Fantastic read! Not even a hint of LLMisms.

Thank you. I put a lot of care and effort into explaining my own insights the way I felt they needed to be expressed in my own voice. Letting a machine replace those words would have ruined that premise.

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#5

Post by taylor-tg » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 4:12 PM UTC

Really enjoyed this, refreshing to read something passionate and hand written. I had no idea how much complexity existed in something as innocuous as handling textures between platforms.

Also pretty cool getting a glimpse into the work 505 does helping developers get their games in front of more people. I had no idea 505 was the publisher[0] for so many recognizable titles.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_505_video_games

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#6

Post by essai57 » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:03 PM UTC

Really nice article, thanks for writing it! I recently dabbled in some of this in connection with modding a game and there encountered the hierarchy you describe of mips, tiles, blocks and texels, so very relatable. Great write-up!

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#7

Post by augment_me » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:09 PM UTC

Why not compress the texture using NTC, VAE-VQ or some neural codec into a general embedding space of uint8 and then just expand and create mipmaps and similar using the target hardware standard?

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#8

Post by cubefox » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:16 PM UTC

Suggestion: Adding dates to your blog posts would be helpful. The first sentence mentioned "last year" and I was confused what that meant since the post was undated.

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#9

Post by Agentlien » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:38 PM UTC

cubefox wrote: post #8

Suggestion: Adding dates to your blog posts would be helpful. The first sentence mentioned "last year" and I was confused what that meant since the post was undated.

That's a great suggestion. I'll probably add that tomorrow.

Re: Anatomy of a Texture

#10

Post by Agentlien » Wed, Sep 16, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

augment_me wrote: post #7

Why not compress the texture using NTC, VAE-VQ or some neural codec into a general embedding space of uint8 and then just expand and create mipmaps and similar using the target hardware standard?

The easiest answer is that most tools and hardware in use predates those type of embeddings.

The advantage with block compression is that it is purpose built to minimize bits used, it's local to small blocks, decoding and encoding can be done with fairly simple code[0], and it doesn't require any specific AI hardware.

I am unfamiliar with NTC, but at first glance it seems to require an Nvidia card with RTX features, meaning it wouldn't be supported on Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (AMD GCN), Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 (AMD RDNA2), nor the original Switch (Nvidia Tegra X1).

[0] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3d11/b...