Introduce bitmap compression for better VRAM management
Quite a while ago the developer of Fstorm render developed bitmap compression which can be applied to any image used in rendering. In Fstorm render this feature can reduce memory up to 5 times, which is very critical when working on large scenes. With almost no speed drop.
Having worked with both Blender and Fstorm, in my experince Fstorm is far more superior when handling these kind of scenes. I have never had any VRAM problems with Fstorm, where in Blender I am already capping my VRAM on a smaller scene. Yes I use instancing. Simplify is a good feature, but something like bitmap compression would be better IMO.
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Well, as an Iconem employee, YES, I'm begging anyone at each Blender conference to introduce VRAM mip-mapping, virtual-texture streaming based on pixel-screen (in Cycles), let alone other technologies such as RTX Mega Geometry or other LOD solutions. I don't spend my time as an artist doing cool camera, lighting, art... I only spend all my brain time and energy trying to balance compute resources, and it is an extremely tedious job, and I hate it with all my gut.
I am just posting from a user standpoint and introducing the idea. I have no idea how it works.
FStorm is a renderer for Max, right? That is proprietary and not Open Source. Possibly try to explain more of the way the compression works and on what exactly so that devs can look at this without the hangup of being told to copy something from a closed source proprietary software.
Just a S3 (DXTn/BCn) compression. That's actually no-brainer.
Yes, okay, so for laypersons like me - is this a compression used on the texture images in scene only, or is this a compression used on the GPU for the overall rendering itself, somehow limiting the use of ram for the scene? A good actionable proposal needs to be clear so that the devs can see the merit of it.