{"id":2026,"date":"2024-04-09T09:22:35","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T08:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/?p=2026"},"modified":"2024-04-09T09:22:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-09T08:22:35","slug":"windows-dds-unknown-file-type-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/windows-dds-unknown-file-type-error\/","title":{"rendered":"DDS Images &#038; Windows Explorer &#8220;Unknown File Type&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_80 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\" style=\"cursor:inherit\">Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/windows-dds-unknown-file-type-error\/#Compressonator\" >Compressonator<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/windows-dds-unknown-file-type-error\/#Image_Formats\" >Image Formats<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/windows-dds-unknown-file-type-error\/#Viewing_DXT5_DDS_Images\" >Viewing DXT5 DDS Images<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/windows-dds-unknown-file-type-error\/#Conclusion\" >Conclusion<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n\n<p>There&#8217;s a problem when trying to view certain types of DDS textures when working with a number of games engine, the following discusses the reason for this and who to &#8216;fix&#8217; it. <\/p>\n<p>So far the following problems only appears to crop up when editing or creating content for games powered by the Doom 3 engine technology.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Compressonator\"><\/span>Compressonator<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>During the process of producing the game id software made use of a  tool from ATI called the Compressonator which had a number of &#8216;filters&#8217; that allowed the compression of images into the DDS (Direct Draw Surface) format of Microsoft&#8217;s DirectX API. In using this tool they inadvertently introduced a &#8216;problem&#8217;, or rather, it&#8217;s a problem when you don&#8217;t know what&#8217;s going on.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Image_Formats\"><\/span>Image Formats<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>As discussed in this tutorial &#8211; <a href=\"making-dds-using-ati-compressonator.php\" title=\"Using ATI Compressonator to make DDS images\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"noopener\"> &quot;creating DDS textures using ATI&#8217;s Compressonator&quot;<\/a>, there are two main types of images used in the Doom 3 powered games;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>TGA<\/li>\n<li>DDS<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>TGA images are industry standard <b>uncompressed images<\/b>, mainly used when games are running in &#8216;Ultra mode&#8217;, the highest setting you can go in to which <b>only use <b><\/b> TGA images<\/b>. DDS images get pulled in for all the other quality settings; &#8216;low&#8217;, &#8216;medium&#8217; and &#8216;high&#8217;. The problem is that the DDS images use a different compression filter depending on what their eventual role is;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>DXT1 &#8211; diffuse, specular and height maps, <b>no<\/b> alpha channels<\/li>\n<li>DXT3 &#8211; diffuse, specular and height map <b>with<\/b> alpha channels<\/li>\n<li>DXT5 &#8211; exclusively for normal maps, <b>with or without<\/b> alpha channels<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s these normal maps that are causing the problem because <b>they use a proprietary format<\/b> that&#8217;s only available in one of the <b>early builds<\/b> of ATI&#8217;s Compressonator tool, this means it&#8217;s not an &#8216;industry standard&#8217; format like the other DDS filters.<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Viewing_DXT5_DDS_Images\"><\/span>Viewing DXT5 DDS Images<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>As shown in the images below, the normal maps are the images shown by the &#8216;x&#8217; thumbnail; contrary to popular thought, <b>they are not<\/b> an &quot;unknown file format&quot;; as mentioned above, they&#8217;re proprietary. If you get the &#8216;unknown file type&#8217; message pop up when trying to view them in Photoshop or other image editing application it&#8217;s purely because  that program <b>doesn&#8217;t have the appropriate filter<\/b> to read the file and thus open it.<\/p>\n<p>When viewing files in Windows Explorer you&#8217;ll most likely see the following; the images that you can see in the thumbnail view below use the standard DXT1 and DXT3 compression filters; the ones you can&#8217;t see use DXT5 &#8211; they&#8217;re all normal maps.<\/p>\n<div class=\"content_images\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/tutorials\/ati_compressonator\/dds_unknown_file_type.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/tutorials\/ati_compressonator\/dds_unknown_file_type_sml.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"436\" alt=\"DDS game textures as displayed in Windows Explorer using a DDS extension plug in. The red 'x' images denote DDS textures the thumbnail plug in can't read.\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>DDS game textures as displayed in Windows Explorer using a DDS extension plug in. The red &#8216;x&#8217; images denote DDS textures the thumbnail plug in can&#8217;t read.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Currently <b>the only way to correctly view<\/b> these &#8216;no shows&#8217; is to <b>open them into ATI&#8217;s Compressonator<\/b> tool from where the images can be saved back out to TGA for editing or further viewing where necessary.<\/p>\n<div class=\"content_images\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/tutorials\/ati_compressonator\/dds_unknown_file_type_ati.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/images\/tutorials\/ati_compressonator\/dds_unknown_file_type_ati_sml.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" alt=\"DDS texture as 'correctly' displayed in ATI's 'Compressonator' DirectX compression tool.\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>DDS texture as &#8216;correctly&#8217; displayed in ATI&#8217;s &#8216;Compressonator&#8217; DirectX compression tool, showing the original image on the left, the compressed version on the right and the results of filtering in the centre, i.e. what&#8217;s been removed from the original to produce the DDS compressed image on the right<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Conclusion\"><\/span>Conclusion<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p>Make sure to check the details of the DDS images used by the game you&#8217;re editing, it may require some elbow grease to manually test images formats but unless a developer clearly states &quot;we used &#8216;x&#8217; format&quot; it&#8217;s the only recourse modders have. If you&#8217;re having problems loading in custom DDS textures make sure you&#8217;ve;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Placed them in the right location<\/li>\n<li>Saved them using the correct DDS filter<\/li>\n<li>Using the correct file paths in the material\/shader files<\/li>\n<li>Made sure that you&#8217;re referencing the shaders correctly on models<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If you still have problem after that and you&#8217;re a member of a mod team, borrow a couple of assets and try loading them into you set up. Conversely, send them your files to see if they can load them, if they can but you can&#8217;t then you at least know there is a problem with your modding set up rather than with the images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[49,508,211,507,510,511,509,468,261,24,506,155,437],"class_list":["post-2026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tutorials","tag-ati","tag-compressonator","tag-dds","tag-direct-draw-surface","tag-dxt1","tag-dxt3","tag-dxt5","tag-errors","tag-normal-maps","tag-textures","tag-texturing","tag-tga","tag-windows-os"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2026"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2031,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions\/2031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.katsbits.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}