Load textures at runtime from outside the res file system

Question

Is there a way in Godot 4 to load textures at runtime from outside the res:// file system without importing them into Godot beforehand?

I've already tried a lot, but somehow I can't get any further and either get the error that resources have to be imported beforehand or, in the case of DDS textures, the error: Unrecognized or unsupported color layout in DDS.

Edit: External textures added for completeness can be loaded in both 3.5 and 4 as dds with the ResourceLoader. I had good results with the BC1/DXT1 format without mip maps.
For example, textures created under Godot 4 can be packed into a resource package with the PCKPacker at runtime, which can then be loaded at runtime and the dds textures contained therein can be used.

Answer 1

Not really sure why you would want to load textures from outside the godot file system but in any case as far as I am aware it isnt possible. There is however a resource loader you can use to import the textures into the godot file system, details can be seen here

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_resourceloader.html

Comments

Thanks for the answer. Yes, this is exactly the part that gives me troubles with Godot 4. In the meantime I have tried it under 3.5, where images can be loaded without any problems. Only under Godot 4 it doesn't seem to work.
I'll play around with this a bit and maybe post it as a issue later.

---

Ahh yes sorry i am in fact still using godot v3.5 as I dont want to port my whole game to 4 so it might be the case that there is some difference or error on godot 4.

Answer 2

I've had success with this code loading .png in Godot 4.0 stable.
There is an example in docs for ImageTexture

var image = Image.load_from_file(path)
var texture = ImageTexture.create_from_image(image)
brush.texture = texture

Here, path is an absolute path received by FileDialog picker, with file in the desktop folder, brush is a TextureRect
Tried on Windows 10. Seems to work in exported project also.