In you have Photoshop then you can load the NVIDIA Mipmap plug-in. As long a you keep backups of your orginal files it's safe.

 

Gerry,

 

I am interested in mipmaps. They seem to have a greater upside and very little downside. Do I understand you correctly that you are mentioning that you can use Photoshop with an Nvidia plugin to mipmap textures? If not, pls forgive my butting in. Thanks

Another easy way for people who don't own Photoshop is to download the freeware DXTBmp program and then just drag and drop the texture you want to add mips to and then resave it and your done. Just need to make sure that the box on the right side that says Add Mip Maps is checked. Works for both .dds and .bmp files.

Another easy way for people who don't own Photoshop is to download the freeware DXTBmp program and then just drag and drop the texture you want to add mips to and then resave it and your done. Just need to make sure that the box on the right side that says Add Mip Maps is checked. Works for both .dds and .bmp files.

 

Thanks for the information. This question betrays ignorance, but is there a way to tell if a texture is already mipmapped before processing? Also, are there issues if one tries to mipmap a texture that is already mipmapped?

 

Thanks

...is there a way to tell if a texture is already mipmapped before processing?

ImageTool comes with the FSX SDK and it will tell you if a texture is already mipped.

 

You can also tell by the file size if you know the pixel dimensions and the texture format.

 

DXTBmp will tell you those things.

 

As an example, a 1024x1024 texture that has been compressed as a DXT5 texture will be 1MB without mips, with mips it will be 1.33MB.

 

are there issues if one tries to mipmap a texture that is already mipmapped?

Any time you reprocess an image file there is a risk of quality loss, though honestly it would take pretty close scrutiny to notice it most of the time.

 

So the answer to your question is no, most of the time.

 

regards,

Joe

Gerry,

 

I am interested in mipmaps. They seem to have a greater upside and very little downside. Do I understand you correctly that you are mentioning that you can use Photoshop with an Nvidia plugin to mipmap textures? If not, pls forgive my butting in. Thanks

 

Yes. You can create a create a .jpg or .bmp in Photoshop and use the plug-in the create a .dds file and automatically create the mipmaps.