Question on .dds files, and viewing texture mesh names

[lemon cup]

Is there a way - such as a lightweight program or file viewer - to look at a .dds file and see the actual mesh definitions/names other than Blender?

I am trying to write some custom coloring configs using Textures Unlimited, which allows you to pick and choose which meshes on a given texture file you want to apply the recolor to. But that requires actually knowing the mesh name!

If the only answer is that I must download Blender, I can live with that.  But my current location is not really conducive to downloading large files so alternatives would be nice.

[ColdJ]

Hi @lemon cup.

*.dds files are only texture files. It is the model file that contains the information as to which part of the texture file is used by which part of the model mesh. You can read *.mu files using this hex editor.

https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

And you can look at the *.dds files and edit them using.

https://www.getpaint.net/

Most model files will have the mesh names written in plain English (some modders forget to name them though) The list of textures used by the model mesh are usually at the very end of the HEX translation, right hand side and then fast scroll to the bottom. In more modern *.mu files the mesh section names are usually not too far above the texture file names.

Hope this is helpful.

The BforArtist 2 version 2.70 port of blender can run the *.mu plugin for blender under the testing section in preferences and it's zip is 202mb. (Only use 2.70 as the later versions of blender stopped being able to use the plugin.

https://github.com/Bforartists/Bforartists/releases/tag/v2.7.0

The plugin can be found here. I suggest you read from begining to the end of the thread to get info on how to put it together from various posts.