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Does texconv from DirectxTex support generating mipmaps for volume textures? If not what are the other alternatives?

I am asking because I have tried to create the mipmaps by using textconv.exe -m 3 my.dds, but it looks like this (I am viewing it in the DDS plugin for photoshop):

enter image description here

And now I wonder whether the DDS plugin is bugged that it displays only mipmap for first texture or the texconv doesn't support it?

EDIT: Acutally by taking a deeper look on this image, the mipmap is somehow blended from these 2 main textures. Why? (high resolution texture here)

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I'm not sure the NVIDIA Photoshop DDS plugins handle volume textures correctly. Have you tried looking at it with the DirectX Texture Tool (from the DX SDK)? \$\endgroup\$ Aug 26, 2013 at 20:57
  • \$\begingroup\$ @NathanReed I was using only DDSView from DirectXTex and it doesn't show mipmaps at all. When I will come back from work I will try to check it. \$\endgroup\$
    – tobi
    Aug 27, 2013 at 6:55

1 Answer 1

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Simple answer: the tool is right, this is proper behavior for a volume texture.

Long answer: A volume texture is a 3D-texture in which mipmaps shrink in all three dimensions. So if you have a 16*16*16 texture, the next miplevel is 8*8*8, and then 4*4*4, etc, down to 1*1*1. If the dimensions aren't the same, then you still have each one (this is the same rule as for 2D textures). So 16*4*8 would have mips 8*2*4, 4*1*2, 2*1*1, and 1*1*1. You have something like 128*128*2, so the next miplevel is 64*64*1. Basically, there is only one 2D slice left to put the data, so it is a blend of the two.

This is like storing a pair of 1D lookup tables in a 64*2 2D texture. The next mipmap is 32*1, and so it can no longer distinguish between the two tables, and it is an average of the two.

What you want is a 2D texture array, for which the mipmaps for different layers are totally separate. If you have 6 layers in a 2D texture array, then you will have 6 1x1 images at the smallest miplevel, all guaranteed not to filter across layers. It looks like support for texture arrays in .dds files is spotty at best. You might have to upload the data manually from a bunch of separate .dds files.

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