Texture Viewer (Windows Explorer Extension)

The texture viewer displays thumbnail images in the Microsoft Windows file preview system. The following are the file formats that can be displayed: For more information on these texture file formats, see D3DXIMAGE_FILEFORMAT.

For a cube texture, the forward cube face will be displayed on the screen. For a volume texture, the first plane will be displayed. These display properties cannot be configured by the user.

Compatibility Chart

Direct3D 9 Direct3D 9 EX Direct3D 10 64-bit Native Mode Windows XP Windows Vista

Yes

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Requirements

Minimum Operating System Windows 2000. The viewer will not work on Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me).

Installation

The texture viewer is automatically installed from txview.dll when you install the DirectX SDK.

Note    Installation will not override any existing Windows shell viewer settings for any texture file formats.

User's Guide

From a folder view of your texture files, use the Windows View menu to view thumbnail images with texture file information. Use one of the following procedures.

Thumbnail View

In the View menu, select Thumbnails. Thumbnails of all supported file formats (see list above) will be displayed. If more than one mip level is available in a file's mipmap, only the top mip level will be displayed.

Figure 1.  Texture view using the Explorer menu

Details View

If necessary, first switch out of Windows classic folder view; see the note below. Select the file you want to view, and then in the View menu, select Details. A rendering of the image will be displayed in the Details pane of the Explorer bar.

Texture view using Details panel of the Explorer bar

Note    The Details view functionality will not work if you are using the Microsoft Windows classic folder view. To change your folder settings, use the following procedure.

  1. Open any folder.
  2. In the folder's Tools menu, select Folder Options...
  3. In the General tab, select the radio button labeled Show common tasks in folders.
  4. Click Apply and then OK.
To go back to the Windows classic folder view, use this same procedure, but instead select the radio button labeled Use Windows classic folders.

Figure 2.  Folder options dialog box