JPEG2000 Support in BS Contact
From version 6.210 BS Contact supports the new JPEG 2000 wavelet compression format.
JPEG 2000 is the successor to the JPEG format. It can produce better image quality in smaller file sizes and also supports alpha transparency, optional lossless compression, 16-bit color and mandatory image metadata. It is especially good for compression of the images that are typically applied to 3D models (repeating/tileable textures) for delivery over the Internet. In comparison to JPEG, best results are seen at extremely low quality/filesize settings. So for example, a 5Kb JPEG 2000 texture will look significantly better than the same 5Kb JPEG texture. At higher quality/filesize settings, the differences are much less obvious.
The JPEG 2000 format supports alpha transparency, which will be of huge benefit in many scenes. For example, scenes with many different Billboard trees and people would traditionally have used either 8 or 32-bit PNG with alpha transparency or 8-bit GIF with index transparency. JPEG 2000 enables high-color images with alpha transparency at much lower filesizes for rapid download. (e.g. in geographical visualizations or in applications that employ many photographs)
Examples:
External References: