M0lz

Thank you Rick and null54 Its come a long way since this .. :)

Rick and Null54 - Thank you for your continued excellent work on Paint.NET.

+1 Paint.NET plus DDS FileType Plus must be the most comprehensive and bug free solution to working with DDS images in a paint package we have ever had.

In the case of Skyrim textures, quite often we see an appropriately named normal / bump map which has been saved in either DXT3 or 5 without an Alpha channel - Would it be better then saved as DXT1 if an Alpha channel was not required technically for this particular texture, or was the intention just to have less artifacts on the produced texture using (in the original artists opinion which we ought to be adhering to unless an obvious mistake was made) a better compression method for the job, or was the intention a memory budget consideration - There are many variations to the use of any particular format which the naming scheme does not convey, so finding out the original images format can be important to decide how to save it after any lossless format work is completed. How many colours does an image originally have, I'm sure there are a lot of details about an image that would make having an "Information" option valuable, besides just in the case of dds texture files. Thank you for the information on the plugin, I can understand that would make finding out the image original format details a bit harder to determine. There are other tools which can help, IrfanView has very detailled information about any image format you load into it, but currently only supports older dds formats and is not as comprehensive as Paint.NET has just become .. Which is why I was hoping Paint.NET would be able to do something similar if it was easy to implement, if it isn't then other tools will catch up eventually so no biggie. Thank you for your time and noticing this request

What kind of image format am I working on, and what format do I need to save it as to be accepted by whatever uses that image? Does it have an Alpha Channel Does it use compression With Paint.NET there is no Image Information, for example : Load up any of the now supported .dds files, BC1 (DXT1), BC2 (DXT3), BC3 (DXT5), BC4, BC5, BC6H and BC7 compressed formats and the A8R8G8B8, X8R8G8B8, A8B8G8R8, A1R5G5B5, A4R4G4B4 and R5G6B5 uncompressed formats. I now need to save the file in the original format .. But have no idea which to choose. If its a game Diffuse Texture, it should be BC1 (DXT1), if it has an Alpha Channel it should be BC2 (DXT3), if it is a Normal / Bump map texture it should be saved as a BC3 (DXT5) or even BC7 / ARGB8 uncompressed - Without knowing the original format we do not know what to save it as and what formats can be applied either with or without compression. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/direct3d11/texture-block-compression-in-direct3d-11 The new plugin supporting most of these can obviously read all of the formats .. .. Does it give Paint.NET any information which could be used to inform the user ? The Image menu in Paint.NET could have an "Information" option which when selected pops up an information window with all relevant format info about the file currently loaded. Would also be useful for people who do not know how to enable view of file extensions in windows, so images like .png .jpg etcetera would be known. Edit : I had some of the BC names - DX names incorrect.

@null54 Thank you for the continued development .. I am a bit late but have only just found out no renaming of dds files is required anymore in more recent versions of PN, and your plugin is included. Very much appreciated

"Updated bundled DDSFileTypePlus plugin to v1.9.7.0" I have only just found out we no longer have to change the filename extension to .dds2 anymore (I know, a bit late to the party it happened a few versions ago) Loading and saving to the newer dds formats like BC7 Linear and generating mipmaps, is all supported. @Rick Brewster and @null54 Thank you so much for this, renaming, working, and then renaming back to .dds with a few hundred files was tedious to say the least, though I was grateful of having some kind of solution to working with newer format dds files .. PN direct support for working with them is a huge help. Again many thanks

And thats where my answer is, thanks null54, good to know it is still going to get integrated, I have been watching your topic and release notes ever since Rick mentioned it but missed that "Whats next" topic :)

Could we please have a clue as to when we can expect the promised DDS Filetype Plus to be fully integrated in PDN? It was stated as an intent to include it, more than a year ago (Sep 2017) by @Rick Brewster, who was going to try and include it within a few months. On Github the plugin is now at version 1.9.2, which includes DirectXTex Nov 16 2018. null54 could not answer the same question when asked recently (Nov 2018) I have seen the (locked) Popular Feature Requests sticky, but that has not been updated since 2016 which was a year before Rick said the plugin would be integrated. Is there a roadmap somewhere else? .

Looks good to me. Thank you for the research put into that.

Full answer and a couple of test results on github https://github.com/0xC0000054/pdn-ddsfiletype-plus/issues/2

Superb, so the first issue will be dealt with in due course. I hope then that the second issue of conforming to the same naming conventions as per the Intel Texture Works plugin for Adobe Photoshop can be adhered to so that when we select a format it is the same name. Choosing from your options in the PDN plugin at the moment does not fill me with confidence that I am saving in BC7 8bpp Fine (Linear, DX11+) and will end up with a normal map that has barely detectable compression artifacts (which is desired, and would not be true if I get the option chosen wrong due to different naming conventions) Compare this With this BC7 Linear Fine the latter screenshot has very little compression artifacting which shows up very much on an in game model where the artifacting is translated into bump mapping on the surface of a model, depending upon your 3D point of view on the object, such compression artifacting can look awful in game .. So getting the right format to save and sticking to the naming conventions is quite important here.

When saving one of the new format DDS .. Say BC7 The file is given a filename like name.dds2 Which is sort of ok, if you rename it to .dds then the target game will recognise it for the type of dds it is anyway - Would just be better if we did not have to rename it and it used the .dds extension as normal. Note Intel Texture Works plugin for Adobe Photoshop does not have this problem, a BC7 dds file with the normal .dds file extension loads just fine into Adobe Photoshop, just like they do with a game engine that supports them (Skyrim Special Edition / Fallout 4). Also, when loading the same texture back into Paint.Net, if the file is now named .dds, PDN will try to load it but fails to recognise the file, even though it was made with PDN - Solution = rename it name.dds2 Then PDN will recognise and load it correctly O_o, bizarre state of affairs. Can you fix this behaviour please. ---------------------------- Issue 2 = In accordance with Intel Texture Works plugin save dialogue we are supposed to be able to save a BC7 as Linear Fine (second BC7 option in the linked screenshot) But in the save dialogue for dds2 implemented in PDN there is no such option that seems to stick to the same naming convention Which of your options equates to .. BC7 8bpp Fine (Linear, DX11+) And if you do actually support the same option, could it be made to read as BC7 Fine Linear in accordance with the Intel Texture Works dialogue screenshot, so that we are all singing off the same hymn sheet and know for certain the format saved is the format desired. Note : I have also added an issue to the plugin GitHub Issues page https://github.com/0xC0000054/pdn-ddsfiletype-plus/issues/2