NVCOMPRESS(1)

💖 NVCOMPRESS(1) 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because we're about to talk about nvcompress — that's the star of this page, from the General Commands Manual section of your local man pages. she takes your image and squishes it down into a dds file. iconic behavior, honestly. 🎀

---

✨ NAME ✨

nvcompress — compresses the given image and produces a DDS file. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly. periodt. 💅

---

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

nvcompress [OPTION] INFILE [OUTFILE]

so you hand her some [OPTION]s, an INFILE, and maybe an OUTFILE if you're feeling generous. the rest is her problem. 🦋

---

🫶 DESCRIPTION 🫶

nvcompress is part of the NVIDIA texture toolset. she takes the infile you give her and compresses it into a dds file. no cap, that's literally the entire plot of this movie. 💖

---

🎀 INPUT OPTIONS 🎀

these are the vibes you tell her about your input image before she gets to work.

• -color — the input image is a color map. this is the default, so if you say nothing she just assumes color. lowkey the main character setting. 🌈
• -alpha — the input image has an alpha channel used for transparency. yes, the see-through situation. 🫧
• -normal — the input image is a normal map. normals need special handling bestie, don't make her guess. 👑
• -tonormal — convert input to normal map. she'll do the conversion for you. ate. 🔥
• -clamp — clamp wrapping mode. this is the default. 🙈
• -repeat — repeat wrapping mode. go off, tile that texture. 🔁
• -nomips — disable mipmap generation. no little baby mipmaps for you today. 😭

---

💅 COMPRESSION OPTIONS 💅

now for the actual compression choices. this is the part where you pick a format and she goes absolutely feral on your file size.

• -fast — fast compression. speed over perfection, we love a quick queen. ⚡
• -nocuda — do not use cuda compressor. like, do not. she's respecting your boundaries. 💀
• -rgb — RGBA format. 🎨
• -bc1 — BC1 format (DXT1). ✨
• -bc1n — BC1 normal map format (DXT1nm). 🧚
• -bc1a — BC1 format with binary alpha (DXT1a). 🍓
• -bc2 — BC2 format (DXT3). 💜
• -bc3 — BC3 format (DXT5). 🌸
• -bc3n — BC3 normal map format (DXT5nm). 🦋
• -bc4 — BC4 format (ATI1). ⭐
• -bc5 — BC5 format (3Dc/ATI2). 👑

bestie, pick the format that matches what your renderer actually wants, okay? she'll happily make any of them, but she's not gonna read your shader code for you. 😌

---

👑 AUTHOR 👑

nvcompress is part of the NVIDIA texture tools. 💖

This manual page was written by Lennart Weller <lhw@ring0.de>, for the Debian project (but may be used by others). shoutout to Lennart, absolute legend, writing docs so the rest of us can thrive. 🫶

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🌈 this one's dated January 10, 2012 and lives in the NVCOMPRESS(1) corner of your manual, so next time you need it just hit up your man pages and she'll be right there waiting for you. mwah. 💋✨