Paint Shop Pro Reading DDS

[CajunRon]

I'm trying to go through JiveBunny's tutorial for reskinning. I've gotten as far as creating the dds texture files and installing the plugin for Paint Shop Pro to load dds files. But when I try to open the dds file in Paint Shop Pro here is what I get. Any ideas?

[tomkat41]

Hi Ron,

I don't know what version you have, I guess they work the same. When you open
your DDS file, look over to the far right and you'll see a small picture of the DDS file.
Right click on that picture and select properties, then a window will open called
"Layer Properties", now look for the "Opacity" and see what it's set at, it should be 100

[CajunRon]

Hi Ron,

look for the "Opacity" and see what it's set at, it should be 100

Tom, thanks for the reply. Yes, it does give the impression that it's an Opacity problem but I checked and it's at 100%. Also strange is that even though it only lists one raster layer I can do a merge (flatten). This gets rid of the checkboard pattern but leaves a very faint, low quality image.

I'm using PSP 8.10.

Looks like one of those strange one of a kind major road blocks for me.

[sniper297]

Got a similar problem, downloaded and installed the plugin from Nvidia but when I try to open a DDS file in PSP 7 I get "you need the plugin", then it crashes to desktop. So I use RStoolsTMB to convert TgPcDx to DDS, then Martin Wright's DXTBmp to open the DDS file and send either the main image or the alpha to PSP for editing. Like his TGAtool2 for MSTS ace files, DXTBmp automatically separates main image and alpha so you can even edit in Windows paint, no sophisticated image editor required. :cool:

http://fly.to/mwgfx/

Hmmm, at the moment his server seems to be down, once it's back up again look in the lower right corner for DXTBmp.

[CajunRon]

I've found a work around but don't know yet how it will handle alpha channels. For the simple example in the tutorial (no alpha) it works.

I found a utility called DDSConverter 2.0. With it here are the steps that work for me

1. Convert the *.dds file to a *.tga file using DDSConverter 2.0

2. Load the *.tga file into Paintshop Pro for editing

3. After editing, merge all of the layers into one Raster layer in Paintshop Pro -for some reason if I let it as a background layer I get a black screen when converting back

4. Save the *.tga file with PSP

5. Convert the *.tga file back to *.dds using DDSConverter 2.0

It's round about but it works. But I'll try your solution also. Sounds more promising

[Hawk]

You'll most likely find that you won't be able to save a tga file with an alpha channel using PSP 8, unless they fixed that with the patch. The original version had a problem with tga files with an alpha.

PSP 7 and 9 work fine but 8 didn't.

See this post. http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/showpost.php?p=1373587&postcount=13

[CajunRon]

You'll most likely find that you won't be able to save a tga file with an alpha channel using PSP 8, unless they fixed that with the patch. The original version had a problem with tga files with an alpha.

p=1373587&postcount=13[/url]

They must have fixed it in one of their patches since I did it all the time when creating models for MSTS. What I'm not sure about is whether DSSConverter can handle them correctly. I'll have to check that out but first want to try to reskin some box cars which I wouldn't think needs any alpha channels. We definitely need more variety there.

[Hawk]

Which patches do you have?

[CajunRon]

The last patch before they went to version 9 was 8.10 which is what I have. I do remember that when saving tga files that would work with tga2ace tool I had to choose the "uncompressed" option, but other than that I never had a problem

[Hawk]

I had that patch at one time but deleted it since I didn't need it.
I don't remember if I ever tried it or not.

[CajunRon]

So I use RStoolsTMB to convert TgPcDx to DDS, then Martin Wright's DXTBmp to open the DDS file and send either the main image or the alpha to PSP for editing.

Well, what worked yesterday won't work today (my method). I'm switching to yours. Thanks.