Dds Textures For Models?

[SneaksieDave]

Is there any known reason this is a bad idea? I'm just about done with my bell, and the textures are 3Mb each, so I'd like to make the diffuse (and specular?) at least into ~700kb full resolution files. They would still be in the textures folder used by models. I'm assuming that would work, and D3 doesn't need to be told a DDS specific path to understand DDS...

[New Horizon]

Is there any known reason this is a bad idea? I'm just about done with my bell, and the textures are 3Mb each, so I'd like to make the diffuse (and specular?) at least into ~700kb full resolution files. They would still be in the textures folder used by models. I'm assuming that would work, and D3 doesn't need to be told a DDS specific path to understand DDS...

 

Can't see why it would be a problem. You can get away with a nice large texture...either 512 or 1024.

[SneaksieDave]

I'll give it a shot. I couldn't figure why it wouldn't work, but at the same time, our models texture folder is 300Mb(!) and full of 3 and 4 Mb diffuses. We could probably shave 150Mb off it if we used DDS diffuses and speculars.

[SneaksieDave]

Huh! It doesn't work. Or so it seems. I generated DDS files for the diffuse and specular the same way I've done it for textures many times before, and the model is black. If anyone knows any particulars about this, chime in, but otherwise I'll probably just decrease the resolution of all but the local.

[SneaksieDave]

Hah! And yet another post. Nevermind, it does work. You just have to put them in the DDS folder. So my original hunch was in the ballpark - D3 needs to be told "duh, these are DDS files."

 

Which means we can do size optimization someday on old bloated model textures.

[OrbWeaver]

I think all textures, whether for brushes or models, are treated identically. Therefore the procedure for using DDS in this case would be the same as normal, which it sounds like it is.