

Gimp dds plugin windows#
It is packaged with the Texture Tools Exporter on Windows and by itself on Linux.

Gimp dds plugin code#
The code for the gimp normal map+ DDS and the photoshop normal map + DDS plugins are identical. The only difference is that you do not need a pirated copy of photoshop to use the gimp plugin commercially. The gimp plugin has a mip map function, just like the photo shop one. So please tell us, what does it do when you add this magical mippmapping to the normal maps? does it improve anything? Do you actually know what a mip map is for, and why it dosent apply to normal maps? In the blender game engine it will not even load the texture if you try dxt5n with mipmaps. If you use mipmapping on normal maps you are guaranteed to get banding in most game engines.

DDS Thumbnail viewer for Windows XP - Very handy!
Gimp dds plugin download#
I’ll download as soon as possible and have a look to see if i have some more info on thatĮDIT: Here’s the download link to the photoshop plugin: If i remember correctly the DDS plugin for Photoshop at least has mipmapping options. I’m not too sure about the alpha mask though, would look like utter crap just removing it on lower levels. I don’t know how this works out in blender but for oblivion we mipmapped our textures manually so it could be done non-destructively in the same app as we created the texture. If you’re mip-mapping textures with normal maps you will be perfectly fine if the normal map is blank from second or third level downwards if you just let it automatically create mipmaps. You can get away with some simple manipulations, but it is always better to just change the original and then make a DDS from that. One last note is that you should make a seperate workfolder for your original textures, the DDS files are not really made for editing. Use the uncompressed, or just keep your normal maps as TGA or PNG’s if you notice banding or bad mippmapping on the diffuse texture.ĭO NOT MIP MAP textures with alphas or normal maps. In the article they say to use the DXT5N compression for normal maps. and I will use the DDS uncompressed for my normal maps.DXT1 has no alpha channel, but DXT3 and dxt5 do.įor things that have lots of alpha maped surfaces like trees, I will use DXT3 because it only needs 16 levels for the alpha, and compresses really tight.įor things like emitter textures:smoke flame, and things that you want to have a nice falloff, I will use DXT5 for it s 255 levels of alpha masking. Generally I will just use DXT1 on a non-alpha masked texture for my diffuse maps. Blender views them very well, and you will be able to see the textures in real time if you have GLSL enabled.ĭXT is a compression that the DDS file uses. Use DDS in blender exactly as you would use any other texture.
Gimp dds plugin how to#
Is there any documentation on how to use it in the BGE?Īlso are there any downsides to using DDS as opposed to JPG or PNG? I read in that article that the quality is slightly less.īut other than that it seems to sound like a very good method of texturing?Įdit And thanks sooo much for the GIMP normal map plugin! Ive been needing that for ages now, but could only find versions that worked with older versions of GIMP. The tools are listed below, with a description for each tool. This page contains several useful texture manipulation tools. NVIDIA Developer – 7 Mar 11 Legacy Texture Tools it will let you see DDS files in explorer as thumbnails! If you are a windows user, here is a nice utility. Compression ratio of DDS is 8x or 4x depending on the alpha channel requirements. So DDS is clearly superior for performances, especially if you don’t have tons of video memory.

DDS textures are sent straight to the video memory, stored as is (compressed), and uncompressed on the fly by the hardware at no cost (in fact, there is a gain because there is less memory access) PNG or JPG textures are uncompressed by software, then sent, stored and used raw, uncompressed in the video memory Normal maps give your models a lighting trick to make fine details on your models. Normal maps in GLSL, and Direct Draw surfaces (DDS). With the release of 2.48 we have 2 very special features added!
