I'm in the middle of trying to open the .DDS File for the Barstow's "old paint" skin so that I can study how it works, and I keep running into the same error: My understanding is that this is due to the .DDS plugin I'm using for GIMP being wildly outdated and abandoned by it's developer. Weirdly enough, it works for most of the older skins currently in the game (you can see the "stripes" skin open in the background), but anything after 0.13 is inaccessible to me. Strangely enough, I can open at least the "patriot" skin for the T-series from 0.13, but at least two skins won't open for me. Can anybody explain what changed in the formatting of .DDS files to the game around that time? More to the point, does anybody know of an updated plugin or a workaround I can use to open these files?
Don't quote me on what I'm saying as I may be 100% wrong due to my utterly crappy memory, but if I remember correctly, the devs switched to some other compressing method with the .dds files (to speed up the loading or something) so due to the age of the plugin it can't open that specific format, just like that error message says
The devs recently implemented BC7 compressed textures for higher quality skins in the 0.15 update. Any .dds using BC7 compression won't open with the GIMP exporter as it is a relatively new method of compression. Use the paint.net exporter instead. CLICK HERE (Read the instructions carefully, If I remember correctly you may need to rename the file to a .dds2 when importing, although I may be mistaken, I haven't made a skin for months.)
The bad news is that they simply integrated the old plugin without updating it - they're actively seeking someone to maintain/rewrite it. What is paint.net anyway? Is it a website or a program? Could I theoretically take one of these new .dds files, open them in paint.net, and then transfer them to GIMP? For that matter, could I open .dds files in blender?
Paint.net is a free program. Its website may look dodgy and outdated but it is 100% legitimate and trusted. https://www.getpaint.net/ Personally I make my skins in Corel Photo Studio and save them as a .png, then import them into paint.net to save them as a .dds, so its definitely possible to transfer skins between programs
