DDS Files

The DirectDraw^® Surface (DDS) file format is used to store textures and cubic environment maps, both with and without mipmap levels. This format can store uncompressed and compressed pixel formats, and is the preferred file format for storing DXTn compressed data. Microsoft^® is the developer of this file format.

DDS is supported only as an input file format. You can use DDS files as texture maps, but you can't render to a DDS file.