Aorta is a GUI tool for creating high quality DDS textures in Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.
I stumbled upon this application a while ago which converts image files to DDS or DDS to PNG. I was meaning to post this earlier, especially since I have not seen any mention of it on Sc2mapster yet, but just lost track of time and forgot to post it.
I use this for all my DDS conversions mostly because of how easy it is to use, especially for batch conversion.
However the best thing about it (as mentioned previously) is that it is cross platform. The nVidia tools are great but when I used them last they didn't have support for Mac OS X, however Aorta does!
The best way to convert to a DDS is save a PNG with transparency and then use it's transparency to automatically generate the mask for it while saving. I have experimented with save settings for DDS files, specifically for icons, to determine the best settings to preserve their quality while maintaining a low file size. Attached is an image of the settings I use.
Link to the Aorta's project page at Sourceforge.
I hope someone can get some use out of this. :)
Note: I did not create this program, nor do I own it. I am merely bringing this wonderful tool to the attention of the modding community!
thanks you very much indeed, i'm not going to use it for sc2 but for two worlds 2, but same .dds stuff.
i dont really like opening my .dds with ps, so i'll give this a try and am crossing my fingers that this program doesnt loose a fourth (e.g. alpha) channel if you have one...
Thanks for sharing the wonderful tool.
How I wish I could handle it better in the near future.
Even though I'm still a green hand now……
Hope it is not out of date.
Thanks again.
Hi everyone,
I stumbled upon this application a while ago which converts image files to DDS or DDS to PNG. I was meaning to post this earlier, especially since I have not seen any mention of it on Sc2mapster yet, but just lost track of time and forgot to post it.
I use this for all my DDS conversions mostly because of how easy it is to use, especially for batch conversion.
However the best thing about it (as mentioned previously) is that it is cross platform. The nVidia tools are great but when I used them last they didn't have support for Mac OS X, however Aorta does!
The best way to convert to a DDS is save a PNG with transparency and then use it's transparency to automatically generate the mask for it while saving. I have experimented with save settings for DDS files, specifically for icons, to determine the best settings to preserve their quality while maintaining a low file size. Attached is an image of the settings I use.
I hope someone can get some use out of this. :)
Note: I did not create this program, nor do I own it. I am merely bringing this wonderful tool to the attention of the modding community!
thanks you very much indeed, i'm not going to use it for sc2 but for two worlds 2, but same .dds stuff. i dont really like opening my .dds with ps, so i'll give this a try and am crossing my fingers that this program doesnt loose a fourth (e.g. alpha) channel if you have one...
looks good. Now I can use my photo shopped stuff in-game.
this is what I've been looking for. finally sharp icons and not blured like the results of the nvida tools
Thanks for sharing the wonderful tool. How I wish I could handle it better in the near future. Even though I'm still a green hand now…… Hope it is not out of date. Thanks again.
I recommend to use nvidia plugin for photoshop. Last time I used Aorta, it did wrong conversion of normal map.