Hello everyone. Great forum. Thought I would quickly knock together this little tutorial to show you decal mapping. I have seen a few ways discussed here. This is by far the easiest and cleanest and quickest.
Here are the start files and finish files plus a few maps I have thrown in.
The basic premise is layering up textures using alpha channels that are already inbedded into your graphics.
You will need to save out your graphics textures from Photoshop with no background and as a TIFF file making sure you save transparency. 3dsmax will then recognise these.
Here is the start, fresh material, and a lovely bonnet to chuck it on.
Add a composite map into the diffuse channel, not to be mixed up with a composite material, two similar, but different things there.
Ok now your faced with an alien rollout, if you havent seen it before. Set the map number to 3. You can go as high as you want depending on the number of decals you have. The ones on the bottom get overlapped by higher numbers, so a bit of thought is needed if you are layering up complicated graphics.
Add a bitmap into the first slot, now choose one of the tiff files I have soo amazingly provided for you.
The most important things here are, the map channel, this needs to change with every map, so start at 1, the next one will be 2, and so on. This is the MOST important element to remember. Also knock off tiling, and make sure the bitmap is using its own alpha.
Now add the second map into the map2 slot, remember to change the map channel ID to 2, and knock of tiling.
Lastly add the third map. Using the same mehtod above.
Right now, to the model. Add a UVW map on the model. Notice how it sits above the meshsmooth. Dont attempt mapping beneath meshsmooth as your maps will distort. Notice the Map ID is set on 1, and the first map is visable as I have show map in viewport turned on.
Now add another UVW map, change the map channel ID to 2, and click show in viewport for map 2 in your material editor. You cant view mutilple maps at once. But there is a solution. Just click on the show manipulator on the tool bar. Now you can see where all your uvw maps are sitting in relation to one and other.
Add another UVW map, change the map channel ID to 3,, hit show in viewport. Stick where ever you want.
And here is the render.
Ok, some usefull tips. Always make sure the Map channel ID is the same on map and UVW map modifier. Always use TIF files. Remember to turn of tiling.
Also you can run into problems if you habe ' show map on backside' turned on. Most of the time I split my materials up, for example a Multisub map, one with a basic paint shader for 99% of the car. The other is the same paint shader with the composite map on. Then I poly select ontop of the meshsmooth, change the Material ID and use the decal material. This makes sure there are no rogue maps popping up. Its a matter of preference and work flow, Im sure you will find a way.
Any questions then fire away. Hopefully this will be easy to follow!
Thanks for tuts, so are you implying that I need to set uvw LxWxH following by decal size rather than mapping the whole object? then move, rotate and etc anywhere on object?
yes, then add as many as you want. piece by piece, this also means that each deacl can be as big or as small image size, and you wont have to work with huge photoshop files to map the whole car. :buttrock:
Hi, thats amazing. works so well and was really easy! Thanks alot. Do you think you could post a setup of a car shader with the decals added? I am just finding it hard trying to get it to work properly.
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