Bullet Decals, Textuing and shading

GlowingPotato

Hello!

I'am having some thoughts about decal projection for bullet decals.

My main doubt is about the color and look of the texture if the decal is projected into different surfaces, for example, a bullet decal projected on a metal surface, and on a wood surface.

Should i have a different bullet decal for each major surface in the game, or there is a different approach for doing this ? (shader).

Any tips and thoughts would be awesome,

Eric Chadwick

I would make different decals for different surfaces. It's not that much work, and can provide a lot of visual fidelity. Wood would have a splintered silhouette, plaster/concrete/stone would have a chunky edge, metal would have a scalloped edge, etc.

I like how DICE did their decals for Battlefield 3, with parallax mapping for simulated depth, works pretty well.

EarthQuake

Yeah, what Eric says. Most games that have decal bullet textures have a material flag for every object to define what surface type it is, and the relevant effect (and sound) is used. Some games even have a map so you can define multiple surface types per object, but that is a bit less common.