How to use DDS

[Serval]

Hi,

Is anyone able to explain what DDS is and how to work with it?
Would be a good tutorial if some screenshots (700pixel wide max) are added as well.

[Osram]

That would be great!
On the BoB2 forums, it is the most asked questions by new skinners, since most current paint proggies do not support it out of the box yet.

Topics could be:
* What options are there to read and/or write DDS respectively convert?
What advantages/disadvantages/limitations do these have?

* Explanaition of "subversions" like DXT1, DXT5.

* How to efficiently work with compressed formats (do not use them as "work files").

* How big is the quality loss of the compression. When to use compression and when not.

I am unfortunately no skinner myself, but can give some further ideas and am willing to proof read.

AFAIK, besides BoB2 also all MS sims (MSFS,CFS,TS) and LoMac use it and it may well be other sims like SF:P1 do as well. I am convinced it is the format of the future, since all modern gfx cards can decompress the compressed DXT files in hardware while rendering.

[adlabs6]

I don't have BoB2, but does it come with a program that encodes/decodes the DDS format?

[Serval]

Thanks for the offer.
Maybe you can point us to some sources about DDS?
I'm a skinner but so far without knowledge about DDS

[Osram]

I don't have BoB2, but does it come with a program that encodes/decodes the DDS format?

No. It is a standard file format. There are some free tools for it like a command line converter and plugins.

[Osram]

Thanks for the offer.
Maybe you can point us to some sources about DDS?
I'm a skinner but so far without knowledge about DDS

http://fly.to/mwgfx (remember DXT is a kind of DDS)


http://registry.gimp.org/plugin?id=4816

http://nifelheim.dyndns.org/~cocidius/dds/ (the same?)


http://developer.nvidia.com/object/p...s_plugins.html

[BLOWHARD]

Didn't see this post. I no almost nothing about the tech side of the DDS thing but we use it in Targetware land. Look here for what the TW Dev guide says-
http://www.targetware.net/devguide/2d/formats.html
Of course the mechanics of conversion are probably different for other games but maybe that will tell you a little more about what it is and does.

[bzhyoyo]

Hi,
here is my somehow limited knowledge about DDS, having used them with cfs3.
I don't seem to have noticed any difference between DXT1, 3 and 5 in quality, but DXT3 and DXT5 can have an alpha channel. For best quality, 5:6:5 format is the way to go, but it also makes for larger files, so it's probably best not to use it for games.

One thing I also noticed is that grey colours tend to get a greenish hue if you convert a bmp to a dds format, especially if you make the conversion several times. So a rule of thumb would also be to convert just once your original file (whatever the format you're using first) : don't tweak a dds file.
This is especially true with Martin's Wright DXTbmp free image editor.

BTW, the photoshop plugin for dds also works with PSP : you just have to create a plugin folder and point to its path in preferences/file location.

Final thought : IMO, it's probably going to be the image format of the future as it really decreases the image weight compared to a bmp.

[Osram]

Thanks for the thoughts.

Interesting on the greenish hue. Reading up on DDS I now know that the compression algorithms are not standardised, so it is indeed the case that different proggies achieve different results.

I agree that it is the future, as you not only reduce the weight on harddisc, but also in VRAM (unlike say if you would use JPG, which you should not do for textures anyway).