vSpace Texture is the magic behind the amazingly photo-realistic models Kaon has made for years for Dell, Sony, Cisco and others. It allows models with as much as 30 mega-pixels of texture data to be squeezed down and streamed to web users, over ordinary Internet connections.
First, a 3D model created with a conventional modeling package, such as 3D Studio MAX, is imported into vSpace Texture. During this import, all textures are collected, and a sophisticated cropping algorithm immediately cuts out any unused portion of the texture image. This is critical when using actual photographs as texture, since so much of the original image is wasted space.
Next, a simple user interface guides the process of choosing compression settings for each of the model textures. Running totals of download size, runtime texture memory requirements, and number of textures remaining to compress help speed the process. Both traditional JPEG DCT and sophisticated Wavelet compression options are available (Wavelets are most often the better choice). Kaon's Wavelet compressor is extremely flexible - allowing user control over color depth, regions of interest, noise reduction, sharpening, and bit rates.
Often, a model will have hundreds of small textures. vSpace Texture allows grouping of these textures into "Composite Images" to save on per-image overhead, and to simplify compression settings. These composites are created only at compression time, allowing easy reconfiguration of composites during the authoring process. Texture mapping coordinates are adjusted automatically.
All compression settings are stored in the Master Model. vSpace Master and vSpace Server can then use these settings on-demand when creating web product tours.