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DDS degrades on open and save?

M

Michael2

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ca-britishcolumbia
Doe anyone know if DDS texture files will degrade when opened, modified, and then saved again? I have a file I would like to make a small change to, and it's very time consuming to use my paint kit files for reasons it would be too tedious to get into.

I use the Nvidia plugin to make and open the DDS files. Normally, I make all changes in my saved layered photoshop textures and then make a new DDS, but for this small change, that's not convenient.
 
Quality should stay the same if no compression algorithm like DXT is involved.
 
But since usually the DDS files use a DXT compression, it is likely that you will loose some quality.
 
I've determined that a one time edit of a .dds file doesn't make any noticeable difference, however subsequent edits will seriously degrade the end result.
 
Michael2 said:
Normally, I make all changes in my saved layered photoshop textures and then make a new DDS, but for this small change, that's not convenient.
Click to expand...
What could be less inconvenient then editing the original PSD texture and exporting to DDS???
 
It would have to be exported to every livery and there are many adjustments that have to be made before each export. The aircraft is part bare metal and part painted and the dividing line is different for each one. It's complicated.
 
Open the original dds, save it as a PSD then use that as your source. Only export to dds when you're ready to try in the sim.
 
I am having a similar problem. The original texture is a DXT5 bmp. I open it in DXTBMP and save it as a 24 bit BMP image, then open the 24 bit BMP image in MS Paint, edit it, save it using paint, open the edited texture in DXTBMP, save it as a DXT5 BMP, and still have the blur in the sim.

Any other ideas on how to fix this?

This is in P3D v4.1 if that makes any difference.

Thanks.
 
Try using Targa (.tga) format. It has much less loss than .BMP format.
 
You say you "still" have a blur in the sim. Was the original texture blurry? If so you probably can't fix that with simple repaint, you probably need to create a larger version of that texture - if it's 512 x 512 create one that's 1024 x 1024, etc.
 
n4gix said:
Try using Targa (.tga) format. It has much less loss than .BMP format.
Click to expand...

Saving as a .tga does not fix the blur problem.

Surprisingly enough, when zooming in and looking close at the texture in DXTBMP before and after the edit, both of them seem to be the same resolution, which makes me thing that the textures were degraded when the unedited ones were imported into DXTBMP for the first time.

Any ideas/thoughts on this?


tgibson said:
You say you "still" have a blur in the sim. Was the original texture blurry? If so you probably can't fix that with simple repaint, you probably need to create a larger version of that texture - if it's 512 x 512 create one that's 1024 x 1024, etc.
Click to expand...

I was not clear on that. I originally opened the texture in DXTBMP, and used the "Send to editor" and "Reload after edit" procedure, which had a blur. Then I read here: https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/show...ures-Degraded-After-Edit-DXTBMP-and-Paint-NET, and then did what I mentioned in my previous post, and "still" had the blur. The textures were never blurry by default.
 
It sounds to me you might have saved the image with mipmaps. Try unchecking Save with MipMaps in DXTBmp and see if they sharpen up.
 
That was it. The mipmaps. It is fine now when I saved with those disabled. No more blur.

Thanks @tigbson
 
Glad to help. I usually keep that box unchecked, except for scenery textures that require it. But it does make the parts more "sparkly" with certain video cards/drivers. A compromise...
 
I avoid mip maps on non-ai aircraft textures. AFAIK mips slow down loading and the only benefit is for multiplayer flying. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
Mipmapped textures draw faster (less texels to render for lower mip settings), but consume more memory and storage space (since the mip levels are contained in the base texture file). So it's the dev's call to use them or not.

Half-arsed knowledge from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mipmap
 
About the bluring and mip mapas it could have something to do with the resolution that are set in Fsx.cfg.
And of course Dds degrade after a few resavings!!
 
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