Procedurally decal a street? Help!

Support Materials and Textures
1

Hi guys,

So, I have been working on this scene and learning a lot, however I couldn’t figure out how to decal the street.
I didn’t unwrap it (and I actually don’t want to), I keep thinking it should be possible to decal the street procedurally.
Using nodes and tweaking the Mapping node location and getting it where I want.

I tried using the Mix node (MixRGB as well) but the decal kinda well… mixes with the asphalt texture and it loses its color (I want to use decals that have some dirt here and there, brownish details). SO, I actually want the decal to sit on top of the asphalt texture (mixing it also gives a weird washed out value).
Can anyone, please, enlighten me?

This is the scene in progress:

obqpteq.jpg1920×1080 195 KB

These are the nodes for the street (the unconnected nodes at the bottom were just part of an attempt that went wrong)

nodes-street.png1920×1080 308 KB

The node group that is present in the nodes presented above is:

nodes-street-group.png1920×1080 483 KB


They are a lot of masks and attempts to decal the street, none of them were that successful.

Please, help me? I want to know if it’s possible to procedurally do something like this without UV maps because maybe this would help me if I ever need to create streets for 3D games.

2

What do you mean by decal? To apply an image texture without unwrapping, you can use the “box” projection method. https://puu.sh/qPF7p/81cedfabe8.png. This is best for patterns, wear and tear, etc. Not the best thing for placing images. https://puu.sh/qPF7p/81cedfabe8.png

Edit: Also, don’t mix the glossy and diffuse like that. Use fresnel or layer weight if you’re going to do it.

3

Let me elaborate:
I have a street patch texture and I want it on top of my asphalt texture. But if I mix them together in a mix node, the street patch loses its color, I don’t want it mixed like that. Is there a way to achieve this? If so, how?

4

There are a few methods. You can use your texture to mix between two different materials, or if you want the street to turn darker from your image, then you can use multiply. Mixing by multiply is very handy for grunge textures with a white background.

5

Have you tried mapping the texture using an empty object? (I’m sorry if I misunderstood the question)

6

It is possible to use object coordinates and mapping nodes to decal streets procedurally, but heavy decal use will then cause the number of nodes needed to skyrocket.

Instead, the best way is to use UV coordinates and masks, but the mapping only needs to apply to the decals themselves (the base textures can still make use of procedural coordinates).