Very simple DDS plugin for GIMP that uses texconv to convert things behind the scenes to encode/decode BC7

README

1. Download the `file-dds-texconv.py` file.  Edit BINARY to be the path to your texconv binary (located in the SE ModSDK, or elsewhere)
2. Copy the script into the GIMP plugins directory.  For instance, `C:\Program Files\GIMP 2\lib\gimp\2.0\plug-ins`

file-dds-texconv.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os, sys, tempfile, shutil, subprocess, time
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

import urlparse, urllib

BINARY="""C:/Your/Path/To/texconv.exe"""

# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11687478/convert-a-filename-to-a-file-url
def path2url(path):
    return urlparse.urljoin(
      'file:', urllib.pathname2url(path))

from gimpfu import *

def save_dds_texconv(img, drawable, filename, raw_filename):
    tmp = tempfile.mkdtemp("-gimp-dds-save")
    name = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(filename))[0]
    try:
        savePath = tmp + '\\' + name + '.png'
        pdb['file-png-save-defaults'](img, drawable, savePath, path2url(savePath))
        #pdb.gimp_message("Save path: " + savePath)
        codec="BC7_UNORM"
        if "_cm" in name.lower():
            codec="BC7_UNORM_SRGB"
        run_smart([BINARY, "-y", "-ft", "DDS", "-f", codec, "-o", tmp, savePath])
        result = tmp + '\\' + name + '.dds'
        #pdb.gimp_message('result file ' + result)
        if os.path.isfile(result):
            if os.path.isfile(filename):
                os.remove(filename)
            shutil.move(result, filename)
        else:
            pdb.gimp_message("failed to save DDS")
    except Exception as ex:
        pdb.gimp_message("Exception:\n" + str(ex))
    finally:
        shutil.rmtree(tmp)

    return None

def run_smart(args):
    try:
        argline = " ".join(["\"" + x + "\"" for x in args])
        #pdb.gimp_message("run: " + argline)
        subprocess.check_call(args)
    except Exception as ex:
        pdb.gimp_message("Error: " + str(ex))

def load_dds_texconv(filename, raw_filename):
    tmp = tempfile.mkdtemp("-gimp-dds-load")
    name = os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(filename))[0]
    try:
        result = tmp + '\\' + name + '.png'
        #pdb.gimp_message(result)
        run_smart([BINARY, "-ft", "PNG", "-o", tmp, filename])
        #pdb.gimp_message('load ' + result)
        return pdb['file-png-load'](result, path2url(result))
    except Exception as ex:
        pdb.gimp_message("Exception:\n" + str(ex))
    finally:
        shutil.rmtree(tmp)

    return None

def register_load_handlers():
    gimp.register_load_handler('file-dds-texconv-load', 'dds', '')
    pdb['gimp-register-file-handler-mime']('file-dds-texconv-load', 'image/vnd-ms.dds')

def register_save_handlers():
    gimp.register_save_handler('file-dds-texconv-save', 'dds', '')

register(
    'file-dds-texconv-save',
    'save a DDS file with texconv',
    'save a DDS file with texconv',
    'Westin Miller',
    'Westin Miller',
    '2018',
    'DDS',
    '*',
    [
        (PF_IMAGE, "image", "Input image", None),
        (PF_DRAWABLE, "drawable", "Input drawable", None),
        (PF_STRING, "filename", "The name of the file", None),
        (PF_STRING, "raw-filename", "The name of the file", None),
    ],
    [],
    save_dds_texconv,
    on_query = register_save_handlers,
    menu = '<Save>'
)

register(
    'file-dds-texconv-load',
    'load a DDS file with texconv',
    'load a DDS file with texconv',
    'Westin Miller',
    'Westin Miller',
    '2018',
    'DDS',
    None,
    [
        (PF_STRING, 'filename', 'The name of the file to load', None),
        (PF_STRING, 'raw-filename', 'The name entered', None),
    ],
    [(PF_IMAGE, 'image', 'Output image')],
    load_dds_texconv,
    on_query = register_load_handlers,
    menu = "<Load>",
)


main()

Great plugin, thank you!

I found one small issue, but was able to fix it: When exporting textures with transparent pixels, the color value was not preserved and they were set to black. This can be a problem when exporting normal maps with alpha channels. However, I noticed that this is because the plugin first exports a .png with the default settings. If "Save color values from transparent pixels" is not checked, these will be set to black (makes sense in a png for more efficient compression). Fortunately, if the png export settings are saved with the checkbox enabled, the plugin will use these settings and transparent pixels are saved correctly.

Plugin permanently overides Gimp inbuilt DDS exporter so cannot chose another type of DDS file type without removing the
file-dds-texconv.py file from the plugin folder.

Solved -- select show all file types, select DDS if BC7 required, select DDS Image for all other variants

Hi, sorry, I honestly have no idea what texconv is and/or where I'd get it from -- I'm coming here from trying to mod some Horizon ZD textures and apparently anything below BC7 won't work for it. I downloaded texconv.exe from https://github.com/Microsoft/DirectXTex/releases and edited the path in the pythonscript as is said in the readme. However, trying to export a .dds from Gimp I now get this message: https://imgur.com/a/fQmdeyk

Any help or clue as to what software package I need in addition for this to work would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you and happy new year! :))

Getting texconv from the DirectXTex releases page is correct. File not found is likely caused by putting the wrong path in the config file. Make sure you use forward slashes "/" instead of "" and make sure the file name is surrounded by triple double quotes """C:/path/to/texconv.exe"""

Is there any chance it could use a relative path and/or search for the binary in the same folder? That would be friendlier towards portable installations as well as making a local snapshot easier (newer isn't always better -- sometimes compatibility can be broken.)

EDIT: Also, maybe it could not bypass the built-in DDS script entirely for saving since it seems to be considerably less detailed in what it can do. For now I just changed the extension it registers as to .dds7 for simplicity's sake, but I'm sure there must be a better way.

there probably is a better way. The best way is to contribute BC7 support to GIMP proper.
Feel free to modify this however you want. If you want to fork it feel free to leave a comment with your changes and I can discuss merging them in to this gist.

Sadly, Python programming is beyond me. What little I did was just simply change a couple of obvious things. But I have no idea how to not have an absolute path to the exe or anything like that.

hey folks, thanks for this great plugin (which I'm using to create an rfactor2 Porsche GT3 skin which seems to use BC7).

The script works great, however DDS export from gimp now takes about a minute (not joking) where as before, with the old plugin, it took all of three seconds. The complexity of the skin in question hasn't increased in any way, but I noted that gimp seems to spend most of the time exporting to PNG first and only then calling texconv.exe in order to create the DDS file.

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour? I'm using gimp 2.10.32 on win10 (sadly, as rfactor2 doesn't properly support Linux yet).

Thanks in advance for your help & all the best,

Uwe

hey folks, thanks for this great plugin (which I'm using to create an rfactor2 Porsche GT3 skin which seems to use BC7).

The script works great, however DDS export from gimp now takes about a minute (not joking) where as before, with the old plugin, it took all of three seconds. The complexity of the skin in question hasn't increased in any way, but I noted that gimp seems to spend most of the time exporting to PNG first and only then calling texconv.exe in order to create the DDS file.

Has anyone else experienced this behaviour? I'm using gimp 2.10.32 on win10 (sadly, as rfactor2 doesn't properly support Linux yet).

Thanks in advance for your help & all the best,

Uwe

You probably used something other than normal or fast BC7 compression, which is CPU only.

use the following line as replacement

run_smart([BINARY, "-y", "-ft", "DDS", "-f", codec, "-bc", "q", "-sepalpha", "-o", tmp, savePath])

and be aware, for some reason this python script plugin breaks the loading of BC1-BC5 DDS files.

Just to save someone else time, this does not work with GIMP 3. Although, GIMP 3 now supports native previewing of BC7 dds textures (no exporting though).