DDS Creation with GIMP

August 2020 - Page Creation in Progress

Introduction

Please review DDS creation for general, tool-independent guidance on DDS creation for TDM.

GIMP (Gnu Image Manipulation Program) is a popular, no-cost image editor. Originally, a separate plugin was required to open and save DDS images, but since version 2.10.10 this functionality is available out of the box. You can find the most recent version here.

Exporting Images as DDS Files

Open your image file (typically TGA) in GIMP. The "Layers" pane on the right hand side should then display just one layer. Its name will be in bold font, if the image is opaque, or in regular font, if it uses an alpha channel.

From the top menu bar, choose "File > Export As..." or press Ctrl + Shift + E. In the "Export Image" window, use "Browse" to navigate to the proper folder in your DDS directory structure (discussed in DDS creation). In the "Name" field at the top, change the file extension from ".tga" to ".dds". Click "Export" or hit Enter.

In the resulting "DDS Exporter" dialog box, choose from available options:

Compression: Use DXT1 for opaque images and DXT5 for textures with alpha channel.

Mipmaps: Always pick "Generate Mipmaps", to avoid in-game errors.

In the "Mipmap Options" Section:

• Filter: Scaling filter for mipmaps. The dropdown list is ordered from faster/low-quality to slower/high-quality algorithms. If you're not sure which one to choose, pick the last one. It's recommended to use the best scaling filter available, as it improves the quality of textures rendered further away from the player, without any additional performance cost.

• Wrap mode: you can leave this to Default, which is to Repeat the texture when tiled. Clamp prevents texture from tiling, which can be useful with models unwrapped in 0-1 texture space, and Mirror does exactly what it says.

• All other options are fine as is.

See Also

• DDS creation for general, tool-independent guidance on DDS creation for TDM.