Multiplier bake - how to save to DDS w/o color loss?

[misukisu]

This must be the stupidest question ever, but I just cannot seem to figure it out myself.

On the left is my multiplier after bake. On the right is my multiplier after I have saved it to DDS (using Photoshop).

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/misukisu/messedupddssave.jpg

It's the colors. I checked the specification and there is some rule saying that the nearest x (2? or was it 4?) pixels are supposed to have just a couple of unique colors.

I'm a beginner on photoshopping. I have tried several ways to reduce the colors, but have not managed to reduce the colors enough without messing up the original image. The leftmost image has 50 colors left, and that is way too much. But if I try to go lower, I get the similar problem than the DDS image on the right is showing.

So, what is the best way to reduce the colors from the original before saving to DDS?

Or is there some option to reduce the color already while baking in Blender?

[cmomoney]

What are you saving it as in Blender?

[misukisu]

I use "Save as Image..." and then save it as png. Is there some smarter option?

[misukisu]

Oh, I found your addon: http://www.modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=458513

I'm going to try that. Thanks!

[misukisu]

It seems that using the plugin did not help on this problem. It would, however, be really handy if I could get the image saved properly. When I zoom in, the resulted image is still borked.

Is there some option in Blender for selecting how many colors it uses in baking? (Going to google...)

[misukisu]

Ok, I have browsed through the options in Blender, but this is still the best I can do:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/misukisu/messedupddssave.jpg

On the left, the original png-format bake, in size 128x256, zoomed 300%

On the right, bake saved as DDS, in size 512x1024, zoomed down

These samples show just part of the multiplier.

It's much better than I started with, but still the png-format file is much better than DDS - even when zoomed 300%.

[BloomsBase]

save it as png as a bigger image, open it in dxtbmp and recuce the size.
Save as dds.(DXT1noalpha or DXT5withinterpolatedalpha, depending how many recolor your object has.)

DXTBMP is the best tool you can use to create dds files.

[misukisu]

Thanks, Blooms!

I tried that tool, and this is the best that I came out with:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b379/misukisu/savewithdxtbmpcubic.jpg

I used cubic and smoothing as parameters. Oh, my cursor seems to be in the image too... well, ignore that, please.

While there still is pixelation (that can probably seen in the game when zoomed in), I think this result is such that I can live with that.

But the EA multipliers are really nice and clean... I wonder how they are made?

[cmomoney]

I save as .tga and convert to .dds(if I don't save directly to .dds). With dds you're going to lose color data, so it's best to start out with as much as possible. It's also best to save as a larger image, say 2x, and scale down as Base said(unless your image is large already, then it may not be necessary).