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DDS Texture Format... anyone know about it?

wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
edited December 1969 in The Commons

I'm running into a lot of freebies with DDS files for textures.
This one I just got:
http://thefree3dmodels.com/stuff/vehicles/taxi/13-1-0-3111

Anyway, XNView will convert them to PNG, but is there some kind of benefit to being able to use DDS as opposed to PNG?

Comments

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    Wow a new one for me here is what I found on Wiki about this format http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectDraw_Surface

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    Hey... I wonder if that's the format that a lot of MMOs are using for their textures...

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,902
    edited December 1969

    DDS is only used in games.

    Irfanview will also convert DDS files.

  • BejaymacBejaymac Posts: 1,886
    edited December 1969

    It depends on which part of the CG world your in as to how often you'll run in to it, DS can't use it and I don't think Poser can either, but if like me you mod games then you'll use it often.

  • wancowwancow Posts: 2,708
    edited December 1969

    are they stored locally for most MMOs or do you always download them? I have Age of Conan installed, and I can't find any textures at all... so I'm assuming they're downloaded each time...

  • SzarkSzark Posts: 10,634
    edited December 1969

    most game makers will inbed the textures using there own file formats for protection. Well that is my understanding of game files

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    DDS...DirectDrawSurface...native format for MS DirectDraw.

    A lossy compressed texture format, mostly used for games. They can be rather poor for detail/close up work that 'non-game' 3D requires. One advantage is that it is a 'standard' that has been adopted by both DirectX and OpenGL and can be decompressed by the video card ('in hardware'). That makes them 'faster' to load for games than other compressed formats that need to be decompressed by the CPU.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,634
    edited December 1969

    Mipmaps are an important benefit of DDS, which is why they're still used in Skyrim and other games that use huge amounts of resources. Mipmaps are progressively smaller versions of the texture stored as layers (and usually generated automatically on saving in a program like the GIMP) which are used to render the texture at lower resolution when viewed at a distance. This saves resources in a game with lots of big outdoor environments.


    As MJC says, you don't want to use them in Poser/DAZ if you can use .jpg or .png instead.

  • RoguePilotRoguePilot Posts: 239
    edited December 1969

    https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

    Here's the nvidia DDS plugin for photoshop. Works with PSP too.

    Mipster is pretty cool too as is the normal map filter if you want to make your textures more efficient.

    A word of warning though.

    Any free model that has DDS files has generally been ripped from a game so copyright will be an issue.
    A lot of companies are ok with modding to put it back into the game but might not be ok with other uses.

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