DECALmachine

[mzprox]

Is it possible to make an automatic process for putting all the actually used decals in one texture map?, like in 22, 33 etc fashion, so they can be used in unreal for example to make a decal material.

[MACHIN3]

@marcatore

it seems simply fantastic… now I think that the last step remains is to have a full bake… or is it already doable ??

I’m thinking to a complete set of tools that give you the opportunity to start froma cube (as you did) and you can export to a FBX file with all the maps baked to import it inside Unity, UE or similar…

Is it something you’ve already planned or is it beyond your target?

anyway, thanks for what you’re doing.

Again, baking decals down to a normal map, is not the intended workflow. but in page one of this thread somebody has done it using xnormal. 1.4 will opeń up the door to this workflow and make it more managable. I don’t know yet if it will be possible to do it without xNormal.

@mzprox

Is it possible to make an automatic process for putting all the actually used decals in one texture map?, like in 22, 33 etc fashion, so they can be used in unreal for example to make a decal material.

Yes, atlas creation will be done in 1.4, the export release.

[darekk]

Hi
Sorry for my newbie question, but how add decals to objects ? I don’t have Asset Management and Hard ops. Can I add decals without this two addons ? In readme file only write use “d” and nothing more. If I press “d”, I see only this

I use v1.2a from gumroad but blender in addons panel show version 1.1.1.
Greetings

[masterxeon1001]

press d with nothing selected.

[FreeAccess (A picture is worth 1000 words)]

I use v1.2a from gumroad but blender in addons panel show version 1.1.1.
Greetings

Hello,
This is version 1.2a :). . . Read the confirmation of @MACHIN3 here

[masterxeon1001]

puts down helmet

[darekk]

@masterxeon101
@FreeAccess
Thanks a lot!

Edit
Another question
Can Decalmachine work with simply cycles matcaps ? I’m trying, but materials in render can’t match. Any ideas how to fix this ?

[MACHIN3]

@darekk

simply cycles matcaps ? I’m trying, but materials in render can’t match.

Gimme a better view of what you are trying to pipe into the decal group please. I have no idea what you are doing.

[darekk]

@MACHIN3

Gimme a better view of what you are trying to pipe into the decal group please. I have no idea what you are doing.

Hi
I have simply matcaps and when I trying match material, decal show me error. I need a little “magic” to fix this

[MACHIN3]

So far DM’s material matching only supports and looks for glossy shaders.

I’ve never worked with matcaps in cycles. So I don’t know whats happening in that regard. If you can upload a small sample scene, with the matcap setup, I can take a look and see if I can make it work. Thanks!

[spiderbrigade]

Darekk,

First, the “match material” only works with simple glossy shaders [EDIT: as pointed out by MACHIN3 already]. Your “matcap” material won’t be recognized.

For the second part, the RGB inputs of the decal node group are for COLOR - if you look inside the group you’ll see they feed into glossy shaders. You’re plugging the output of an emission shader into that input, which doesn’t work.

It is quite possible to have the decals switch between your custom material and the subset material, but you’ll need to break open the nodegroup to do that. Essentially the decal image textures are driving mix shaders between your “outside” material and the subset material/transparency. You also have to plug the normals into your base shaders for the parallax effect to work properly. It’s a bit more work than the matching but it means you can use decals with more complex materials with no problem. While the immediately obvious utility of DECALmachine is for mechanical stuff I think it can easily be used for cloth or organics using this method.

In this case I used a simple voronoi foam for the base and a scuffed nK-metal for the insets.

Attachments

[darekk]

@machin3
This is simple matcap material. If You can look …
cycles_matcap.blend (1 MB)

@spiderbrigade
Thanks for explanation. Trying implement this into my work.

Edit
Still fighting 2:30 AM

@spiderbrigade
Could You look at this material ? Was that what You meant ?
decal_matcap.blend (7.21 MB)
But what with middle hight map ? Leave it ?

@machin3
Is it possible automatize this simple matcap material to Decal machine with one button ?

[spiderbrigade]

Taking a look at your specific use case, it’s going to be more tricky because the parallax effect of DECALmachine works by messing with the normals, and your matcap material also works that way. It’s likely possible to combine the two more accurately but that math is beyond me.

[Edit: I’ll have to check on what the heightmap is doing in the default DECALmachine nodes, but for my tests I did ignore it as you’ve done in your .blend]

That said, the results you’re getting look pretty good to me, especially on the insert. Matcaps tend towards the illustration side of things rather than photorealist, and the renders I’m getting from your setup fit with that.

For the question of automating material matching, I’d suggest that the best approach is for MACHIN3 to document a standard as part of the plugin that the material matching script can handle. I’m not a Blender scripter in any way but I’m guessing the current version does something like:

• find a Glossy shader node in the base material
• read the RGB value and roughness of that node
• assign this RGB and roughness to the decal node group

A more flexible version might be:

• Find the nodegroup whose name contains eg “DECAL-BASE”
• connect the normal calculated by DECALmachine to the normal input of nodegroup found above
• connect the shader output of nodegroup found above to input of mix shader (same setup as currently)

If that kind of workflow is possible, it should also be possible to look for a second nodegroup containing eg “DECAL-SUBSET” and plug that into the mix shader for the subset.

[MACHIN3]

@spiderbrigade

• find a Glossy shader node in the base material
• read the RGB value and roughness of that node
• assign this RGB and roughness to the decal node group

That is indeed what it’s doing right now.
I’m just chiming in to thank you for your help here spiderbrigade, much appreciated. FWIW I’ll be taking another look at material matching for version 1.5, I’ll try to support as many shaders as I can by then.
A shot in the dark, but do you happen to be a mac user?

If that kind of workflow is possible,

It is

[spiderbrigade]

Awesome, looking forward to 1.3 already with the automated decal creation. I can usually muddle through normal map baking but having it scripted will speed things up a lot. Glad to hear that materials will get looked at down the road also. As I say, the current workflow is not bad at all but more speed is always good

@MACHIN3

A shot in the dark, but do you happen to be a mac user?

I’m not, why do you ask?

[MACHIN3]

@spiderbrigade

I’m not, why do you ask?

Looking for a capable macos beta tester

[Pengyu]

hi @MACHIN3 , I have some rendering issues while using gpu, except the info-type decals works all good.on my laptop is a entry-level graphic card gt720m, is this problem is due to the low performance of the graphic card?

[MACHIN3]

Hmm, it’s not the parallax mapping, as the panel decal is also affected.

Can you do a simple test too see if you can render normal mapped geo and alpha mapped geo? Does it only happen with shift + z or also via f12? Can you change the featureset from experimental to supported? Can you uploaded the scene somewhere? Don’t forget to pack the images via file - external data.

[FreeAccess (A picture is worth 1000 words)]

Hello,

Version 1.3 is Out . . :eyebrowlift:

First impression:

Under BLENDER 2.78.5 the addon works correctly.

Easy installation. Do not forget to install the PIL library in a directory / modules.

The creation of new layers is now completely automated. . . A real pleasure of use and speed of execution.
- creation of the source object (s), a single click and hop the new decal is automatically added to your library.

For now that fun to use
Respects for this enormous work that brings a real plus to the creation under BLENDER :yes:

[artisanicview]

@FreeAccess

Hello,

… Do not forget to install the LIP library in a directory / modules.

A small correction. I think that need to install the PIL library.