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   DXT Compression Plugin


    This .dds Photoshop plugin requires Direct3D 9.0 or higher  to be installed.

     DirectX 9 is available at:  http://www.microsoft.com/windows/directx/downloads/drx90.asp


    Copy the file dds.8bi to

    \Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 5.5\Plug-Ins\File Formats  or
    \Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 6.0\Plug-Ins\File Formats or
    \Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop 7.0\Plug-Ins\File Formats


    This should work with Paint Shop Pro, but I have not tested it.  Some users have reported that the alpha channel is lost.



    Use "Save As" and "DDS" to save compressed files
    Allows dropping .dds files into PhotoShop

 

Save Format

    Chooses which format to save the image as.  This is affected by Options and Fade To Color below it.

    DXT1, DXT1 with alpha, DXT3 and DXT5 are compressed formats

    DXT1's compression ratio is 8:1

    DXT3 and DXT5's are 4:1 compression ratio

    Other formats are uncompressed

        16 bit (4444) - 4 bits for alpha, red, green and blue

        16 bit (1555) - 1 bit for alpha, 5 for red, green and blue

        16 bit (565) - no alpha, 5 bits for red, 6 bits for green, 5 bits for blue

        32 bit RGB - 8 bits for alpha, red, green and blue

        24 bit RGB    - 8 bits for red, green and blue 

        16 bit (0:5:5:5) 5 bits for red, green and blue 

        8 bit index  - create a 256 entry paletted texture RGB or RGBA

        V8U8 - Environment-Mapped Bump Mapping (EMBM) format. 16 bit

        CxVuU8 - Compressed Normal map format C = sqrt(1 - (U2 + V2)). 16 bit

        A8 - Alpha channel only. 8 bit    

        4 bit indexed - create a 16 entry paletted texture RGB or RGBA

 

 

You can preview your texture in a 2D or 3D window.

For 3D

    Select the formats that you wish to preview and select 3D Preview.  Change options in the dialog, then hit Refresh View to update the textures

For 2D

    Select 2D Preview (no formats are needed, 2D preview is always 8888 format).   Change options in the dialog, then hit Refresh View to update the textures.

 

Profiles

You can save your settings in a profile and load it back in later.  You can also specify a profile directory and the combo box is populated with all the profiles in that directory.

The default directory is '.' , the current directory.

 

MIP maps

   

 

       

 

        

 

 

Generate MIP maps - MIP maps will automatically be generated for you.  Filtering and Sharpening applies.

        The combo box specifies the number of MIP maps to generate or use from the existing image.

        Use Existing MIP maps - The image contains the MIP maps already. Use those. 

        No MIP maps - No MIP maps will be exported.

 

Filter Type

  When MIP maps are generated different filtering algorithms are used to create the MIP levels.  

Point: No filtering

Box: Fastest filtering

Mitchell:  High quality filtering

The rest are for experimentation: Triangle, Quadratic, Cubic, Catrom, Gaussian, Sinc, Bessel , Hanning, Hamming, Blackman, Kaiser 

I believe that Photoshop uses cubic filtering

Filtering Properties        

Kaiser Gamma: Gamma value for filtering in gamma space.  Not implemented yet. Default 2.2.

Blur Factor: During MIP map generation, you can increase the sharpening or blurring.  Default is 1

Override Filter's Default Width: Each filter has a default width associated with it.  You can override it by selecting this.

        Filter Width:  Use this filter width instead of the filter's default value (0 - 10)

 

    Sharpening

   

You can optionally sharpen an images after MIP map creation with the sharpening filters.  These are applied after the MIP map is created.

Sharpening Filter

None - Do not apply a sharpen filter

Smoothen - Slightly blur

Sharpen Soft - 

Sharpen Medium

Sharpen Strong

Mean Removal - Sharpening 

UnSharpen Mask - Sharpening,  use Custom Dialog to change parameters

XSharpen - Sharpening,  use Custom Dialog to change parameters

Warp Sharp - Sharpening, currently disabled

Custom - Create a custom filter

 

Image Intensity These are not sharpening related

Negative - Negates the colors

Lighter - Makes the image brighter

Darker - Makes the image darker

Contrast More - Add contrast

Contrast Less - Reduce contrast

 

Edge Related - These are misc that show other filtering weightings

Find Edges  

Contour 

Edge Detect

Edge Detect Soft

Emboss

 

Create a 5x5 filter by selecting 'Custom' in the filter combo and change the 25 entries in the Custom Filter Settings area.

Each setting is divided and bias as above.  To maintain the intensity of the image, you can balance the divider or the bias by hitting the Balance button.

Unsharp and Xsharpen parameters are customized here also

 

Image Options

        Quick Compress Method  - A Fast, low quality compression method

        Error Diffusion - Add error diffusion to compression.  This is usually used for normal maps or smooth gradient images.

        Dither Color in MIP maps- jitters image so 16 bit image look better. dithers then generates the MIP levels.

        Dither  MIP 0 - Apply dithering to MIP main image

         BorderColor (1 texel) - Create a one texel border around each MIP level.  

             Border Color - Specify the border color

         GreyScale - Set if image is all or mostly a grey scale.        

        Alpha Zero Border - Set the alpha channel to zero for the border of each MIP level

        Binary Alpha - treats alpha as one bit only for MIP map generation

        Binary Alpha Threshold - When Binary Alpha is selected, this value determine if the alpha is zero or one.  If the alpha channel is greater than or euqal to this threshold, alpha is set to 1.0, otherwise alpha is set to 0.0.

 

Fade MIP maps

   

 You can fade each MIP maps to a specific color.  

        Fade Color - gradually fades from the image to a selectable color over n MIP maps.

            Fade Color (button) selects the color 

        Blend Amount lets you specify a percentage fade for each MIP level.

        Start at MIP.  delays fade until a given MIP level

        Custom Fading per MIP level.  Instead of programmatically fading alpha, you can specify the alpha fade on a per MIP map level.  This button displayes the 'Blend per MIP level' dialog.

 

MIP 0 (base image cannot be faded)

Specify what percentage of the fade amount for each MIP level

Set numbers allow up to 10 different fade profiles to be saved

Controls are disabled if there is no MIP map present.  In this case levels 10-13

Use These Fade Amounts - Enable the use of the blending set.  Otherwise the main dialog values are used.

Normal Map Settings

 

You can convert height maps to normal maps by checking Convert tp Tangent Space Normal Map' button

Normal map generation converts the image to height to generate the normal maps.  The height can come from the alpha or color channels.

The normals are created by using adjacent texels.  You can specify how many in the "Height Generation" area.

Scale - Specifies how much to scale the height values. floating point value.

MinZ - Forces the "up" direction to be a minimum value

Du/Dv Use this to create EMBM maps

InvertX, InvertY - changes the direction of X or Y

Alternate conversions

    Biased RGB subtracts average color of image from each texel

    Red - Use the red channel as height 

    Green - Use the green channel as height 

    Blue - Use the blue channel as height 

    Max - Use the maximum value from the R,G and B channel

    Color space - Height = 1.0 - [(1.0 - r) * (1.0 - g) * (1.0 - b)]

    Normalize Only - Image is already a normal map, just renormalize

Alpha Field - Specifies what is placed in the alpha channel after normal map generation

    Select 'Using Multiple Layers' if you are are using Layers and cannot get the alpha channel to work

Image Type

    This selects what the type of input image you are working with.  Different compression methods are used depending on what the image is.

 

 

Preview Options

        

        Alpha Blending - Enables/disable alpha blending using the alpha channel of the texture.  This is applied to 2D and 3D previews

        Show Differences - Compares the full precision image with the modes that are selected.  Differences are magnified 10 times.

        Enable Filtering - Enables disable all texture filters

        Display MIP Mapping - Enables/disable MIP mapping display (no MIP maps are displayed)

        Disable MIP Mapping - Enables/disable MIP mapping generation (no MIP maps will be created)

        Anisotropic - Enables/disables anisotropic filtering

        Background Color-  Specify the background color in the 3D display

        Background Image: Specify a background image in the 3D display.

            Use Image: Enable/Disable use of the backgound image

            background image file name is listed at the bottom of this group

Configuration Settings

 

Show Size Warning:  Warns if the texture is the wrong size

Ask To Load MIP maps: Enable/Disable the dialog that asks you if you want to load MIP maps

Show Alpha Warning: Warns if alpha is all black

Texture Format based on Alpha: Choose the texture format based on the alpha channel

    DXT1 is no alpha channel

    DXT3 if there is an alpha channel.

Reset Default Values - resets all values to defaults

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