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GIMP issue opening dds dxt5 filetypes

A

adamjedgar

Messages
64
Country
australia
Hi guys,
i have also asked this question on the gimp forums, however, if any of you have been to one of them...they are nothing short of fustrating.

so here i am with my question searching desperately for meaning and understanding...

I am re-texturing aircraft .dds files from FSX using GIMP

my understanding is... if i was using photoshop i would use a third party program ("dxtbmp") to change the dds file format to a bmp that photoshop can edit. However, since im sick of using multiple programs to import/export just to get to the editing stage, i jumped at the chance to skip a step by using GIMP with the .dds plugin!

I found the dds plugin for GIMP and have sucessfully installed it.

i encounter problems when the following is true...

if the file is a "fsx.dds dxt1" compression type it opens perfectly. However, if it is an "fsx.dds dxt5" compression type, i have a transparency issue

it appears as if the transparency is set to about 50% on the main surface image. I cannot increase the actual transparency any higher as it is already at 100%. I did a little experiment with the image and found that if i use DXTBmp to convertthe image to a .dds dxt1, GIMP opens it perfectly. If i then change it back to .dds dxt 5, GIMP displays it incorrectly again.​

You will notice in the attached image that the GIMP image on the left is showing a very low transparency/opacity setting and yet the exact same image opened in DXTBmp is displaying perfectly.

I have tried removing the alpha channel, not sure if i have done it correctly as im new at all of this...in any case, it didnt help.

I have included the zip file containing two examples of the same image...1. is a dds dxt 5 and the other dds dxt 1 (at least i think that's what they are...im getting a little unsure now)

can anyone with GIMP have a go at these and help me out please?
I dont know if photoshop has a similar plugin, and/or if it encounters a similar problem with different compressions of dds images if it does have a dds plugin, but id really like to understand the problem and find a solution using GIMP as im sure it will be of help to someone else.

cheers
adam
 

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I have the solution

Guys i have figured it out...

There are two issues using gimp 2.8 in its "out of the box" format for editing fsx.dds files.

1. Gimp for some reason cannot remember that it is actually over writing the original file and so when you attempt to reload the file a few minutes later gimp keeps reloading the file it had in its own little file registry, which may or may not be the one fsx is using (even when that file has been deleted in windows explorer and no longer exists in the directory...don't ask me how in gods name it does that, but believe me it does!!!). If i was to take a stab at it i would say that the is meant to be an error message that pops up saying one cannot save directly to the fsx directory...i found saving to the desktop then manually copying the file over sorted this problem.

2. Gimp in its default settings, quite frankly sucks for trying to load edit and save fsx.dds filetypes. The default display settings are not right for editing fsx.dds files so you have to change em. No big deal, but annoying in this day and age for a beginner like myself, who doesn't have a clue about this sort of stuff!(even more annoying that i had to bloodywell figure it out for myself after hours of trial and error importing and exporting to and from DXTBmp, comparing with the photoshop dds plugin, and opening aircraft in fsx to see what worked and what did not). So here are the solutions to my problem...as you can tell from reading above there are at least two parts to the issue.

okay now for the solutions....

First,
Always save the edited file to a different directory...never to the original fsx directory!

Why you may ask...(go back read the mini essay again)

Second...
To get rid of the annoying checker grid that you can see in my left image in first post of this thread do the following...

1. EDIT menu>Preferences>Image Windows>Appearance

under both "default appearance in normal mode" and also for "default appearance in Fullscreen Mode" (you need to change settings for both) change the "Canvas padding mode:" color to "light check color" and change "custom padding color" to white! (dont forget to do it twice..once for each of the appearance modes)


My only concern now is i hope this works...ive only tried it on 3 aircraft models from fsx...but so far so good!

Hope this saves someone else the "8 hours of stuffing around" i have just spent trying to sort it out for myself. To be honest, i would have figured part 2 out much sooner if it wasnt for the bloodywell stupid part 1 problem with the program itself! Can u imagine trying to problem solve with that kind of issue throwing curve balls at you. I make a change to the image, save it, and fsx keeps loading up the old one. i go into gimp and it tells me that the image fsx is loading isnt the right one (even though they are one and the same image!) i go into photoshop and it completes the exact same task without issue...i give up go to bed, wake up the next morning and to my amazement fsx is now loading the correct image...i hadnt even done anything in the meantime...it was gimp's little registry not clearing itself when i edited/deleted/over wrote the files...i was tearing my damn hair out (excuse the slur)

To be honest, i think photoshop is actually the easier of the two programs to use for this kind of work...especially now that i have realised Nvidia have created a .dds plugin that seems to work and appears at face value to be far superior and, more capable and customizable than the GIMP plugin(im still at very early stages of testing the Nvidia plugin and, have struck a problem already with the texture mapping on the aircraft...im obviously not doing something right...time will tell)

find Nvidia dds plugin (also known as nvidia texture tools) at following link
http://developer.nvidia.com/content/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

i havent bothered too much about whether one gets the 32 bit version or 64 bit version...ive read that it doesnt make much difference and that you should just get the 64 bit version. Honestly, i havent a clue at this stage...someone with more knowledge than me should answer that question. What i can say is that i have the 64 and 32 bit versions of photoshop and im still to try it out properly in both!
 
oops i forgot one more thing...

step 3 in solution

LAYER menu>Transparency>Threshold alpha> set the slider so the threshold value reads "0".

This will sort the rest out nicely.

cheers
adam
 
I usually run .dds files through Imagetool first before loading them into GIMP. The .dds plugin (not sure if still required for 2.8) is too inconvenient for my taste.
 
The Photoshop plugin works really well, get the 64-bit version if you have 64-bit Photoshop (I wish! but CS2 will do me for now).

If you don't have Photoshop, another free option is Paint.NET which will read and write .DDS files. A 64-bit version is also available.
 
I started using GIMP editor and after copy/paste a JPG image on the selected square from DDS file it appears too big not fitting well. How to adjust the size from the filled selected square of DDS file?

Pat
 
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