Images
Images are pretty pictures that appear on your screen!
…Alright, it’s slightly more technical when it comes to modding.
DDS Images
Section titled “DDS Images”The main image type used by Sims 4 is Direct Draw Surface (DDS), which supports a number of different compression formats (DXT, ATI, etc). You may also see the term DST, which is a DXT image with EA’s obfuscation applied (handled automatically by S4E and S4S).
The different formats offer different features (typically related to transparency) in exchange for file size. DXT5 is the most common as it has the most features, but other types are occasionally used to save on space.
| Format | Alias |
|---|---|
| DXT1 | BC1, DST1 |
| DXT3 | BC2, DST3 |
| DXT5 | BC3, DST5 |
| ATI1 | BC4 |
| ATI2 | BC5 |
RLES & RLE2 Work in Progress
Section titled “RLES & RLE2 ”These are image types, but I haven’t properly investigated them. Based on the name I assume they use some sort of run length encoding.
Thumbnails Work in Progress
Section titled “Thumbnails ”Thumbnails can be normal PNG images.
Internally, they sometimes use a weird PNG/JPG hybrid format that stores the alpha channel separately, but this appears to be optional and will be ignored for the time being. Mentioned for completeness.