What software could show thumbs for dds exported from Designer?

[kirkr5689]

I see dds is a file format substance could quickly export and import .. Much quicker than  any other file type.   What picture browser could show them ?  Not Adobe bridge  it sseems?   A sort of addon to Windows  maybe?

[Luca Giarrizzo]

Hello,

XnView has partial support for DDS files (partial in that some files cannot be displayed).

NVIDIA offers a good set of legacy tools for DDS workflows, including a app/plugin for real-time visualization of compressed textures.

I hope this helps!

[kirkr5689]

Nothing of those are working 😞   . I think I had some other addon  before that did it .    Can't recollect its name now.

[Dean22517655aei7]

Substances Native dds export isn't of much use as it doesn't include mip maps.

A comprehensive exporter plugin was written and released free to the community by

https://github.com/OlafHaag/substance-mipmaps-exporter

but it seems version 14 of Designer has changed something in Python so the plugin no longer works. I hope Adobe are supporting him in updating it as its become essential to my workflow and saves a LOT of time.

As for your question, Windows 11 displays them natively if you have a preview window open in Explorer.

Or you could try Irfanview.

[Dean22517655aei7]

Theres also Nvidias Texture Tools and Intels DDSs tools if you need plugins for Photoshop.

[Luca Giarrizzo]

Hello @Dean22517655aei7,

Thank you for sharing this. The plugin most likely needs to be updated to use PySide6 instead of PySide2, following Designer's upgrade from Qt 5 to Qt 6. You can learn more about this required plugin update in our dedicated post. I suggest reaching out to the plugin's author so he can perform the update.

Regarding the absence of mipmaps in Designer's DDS exporter, I will raise this topic with the rest of the team.

Best regards.

[Dean22517655aei7]

Thanks for the link, Luca. I passed that onto the author.

[Dean22517655aei7]

Hi Luca,

Further to this, I did contact the author of this DDS mip map plugin for Designer to see if he could update it to work with Substance 14. He appears to of moved away from Substance and while he said he'd try to update it a couple of weeks ago, I suspect his enthusiasm has waned.

That means Substance has no means to directly export mip map-ed DDS files. A standard if not THE standard game format after png. 

Its 2024 and thats really not good enough. If Adobe has beef with Nvidia then they need to act like grown ups and sort it out.

[Dean22517655aei7]

Hi Luca,

Any update on this or are Adobe simply not supporting mip-mapped dds export? Right now non of our artists are upgrading beyond 13.1 . Is there anything I can tell them other than Adobe isn't interested?

Cheers

[Cyril Dellenbach]

Hello @Dean22517655aei7,

Sorry for the delay in response.

I'm afraid we have currently nothing planned for supporting mip-maps in DDS exports. The problem is that there are many ways to compute mipmaps and from discussions with studios, it seems most use custom techniques.

For now, I advise you to create an "Idea Post". The idea section of the forum is where we classify users suggestions. Depending on the community's interest the feature can climb up in our priority list.

Best regards,

[Dean22517655aei7]

If you've not already found it the Intel Texture Works plugin for Photoshop is here

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/articles/tool/intel-texture-works-plugin.html

[Dean22517655aei7]

Note that theres also a DDS exporter for Painter though its not been updated for a year so is likely also broken too.

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/m8dyvv