it is a clothing texture un upper class called pants02 when I try to open it in gimp it only shows the belt with a transparancy around it, is this because i converted it to a bmp? are the other part in layers in the .dds?

Are you opening the Pants02_n.dds by mistake ? -- IT has an alpha layer that is only the belt portion from the looks of it.

Here is a PS screen of the .dds and the alpha channel of the _n.dds side by side ---- http://i212.photobucket.com/albums/cc189/JDFanning_bucket/uppant.jpg

No, It doesn't even show the part of the belt in the upper right hand corner, just the buckle and the short part beneath the acorn/tree pattern.

Grab http://developer.nvidia.com/object/windows_texture_viewer.html so you can open .dds files in a preview window, and http://developer.nvidia.com/object/dds_thumbnail_viewer.html so you can enable thumbnail view in windows explorer for .dds files, and finally get the http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/ so you can load and save .dds files without needing to convert (though, fair warning, you'll get better quality if you save as .png in Gimp and convert to .dds with DDS Converter or Paint.NET).

I don't know why particularly you are having the issue, but these tools will make it easier.

For the record, I converted the same texture to a .bmp and opened it in Gimp, and it looked fine. :shrug:

when i go to install the dds plugin it says some gimp .dll is missing.

I don't have an Nvidia graphics card.