[ Maya ] DecalMaster - Accelerate Detailing Through Decals and Trim Sheets

Xealot

DecalMaster is a Maya plugin designed to accelerate the surface detailing phase by providing a UV-less, non-destructive, non-committal workflow through decals and trim sheets. It does this by enabling quick placement of decals onto a target mesh as well as automated uv unwrapping target mesh faces to trims within a trim sheet. These decals and trims are also automatically material matched to seamlessly blend with the target mesh surface.

DecalMaster also provides tools for baking your own custom decals and trim sheets which are then stored in libraries, they can then be accessed through the radial menu for quick selection when detailing. These libraries can also be shared amongst artists to further accelerate detailing.

DecalMaster lastly provides export tools, like an atlas editor to create decal atlases of the decals used in the scene, an export dialog to assist in outputting default game engine shaders, channel pack texture maps into compact files, as well as combine decals into a single mesh for optimal rendering performance in popular game engines like Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, etc.

DecalMaster enables you to focus on exploring details instead of executing repetitive procedures by automating the tedious tasks of material setup for decals and trim sheets, precisely projecting decals onto the target mesh, uv unwrapping faces along trims within a trim sheet, rapidly make adjustments and more.

Release Trailer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E3unXrIb5s

DecalMaster 1.05 supports Maya versions 2022-2025

All Details are Decals

Features

• Seamless UI/UX integration with Mayas existing floating menus based workflow, including non-intrusive hotkeys overlay

• Streamlined transforming of decals, flows & trims directly in the 3D viewport using custom Maya manipulators

• Decal placement onto target mesh using mouse raycast or selected faces

• Project decals onto curved surfaces to precisely adhere to underlying target mesh topology

• Support for both PBR normal mapped Decals and simple PNG image decals

• Flow line placement onto target mesh using selected edges or boolean slice between target mesh and cutter geometry

• Automated quad face unwrapping onto trim sheets

• Support for both repeating and non-repeating trims with a selection from various fit modes

• Advanced decal, flow & trim materials with up to three sub-materials to enable greater details and base material transitions

• Automated material matching, parenting and normals transfer

• Non-destructive workflow, remove or make adjustments to decals, flows, trims & their materials at any time without the need for construction history

• Bake custom made decals, flows & trim sheets into your personal libraries or download libraries created by other artist

• Decal atlas generation to combine decal textures used on a target mesh into a single texture file for improved rendering performance in game engines, separate back to individual textures at any time

• Combine decals geometry into a single mesh for improved rendering performance in game engines, separate at any time

• Export channel packed decal atlases and trim sheets used by target mesh for use in popular game engines like Unity, Unreal Engine, Godot, etc.

• Perfect for the mid-poly + decals workflow to achieve high texel density without requiring a global texture for the entire mesh, instead utilizing repeating trims to cover the surface & geometry decals for unique texel details, all while bypassing laborious UV unwrapping

• Includes 35 Decals, 8 Flows & 15 Trims

• Includes Example Maya Scene to Study

Parallax Occlusion Mapping in Unity

Planned Improvements

• Radial menu library pages

• Implement support for Parallax Occllusion Mapping in Maya viewport 2.0 & Arnold for preview before export to game engines

• Improved symmetry support

• Improved trim unwrap triangles and ngons support

• Improved flow line placement onto concave topology

• Cut floating trim quad area directly onto target mesh

• Delete unused DecalMaster resources in scene

• Option to save decal sizes per decal id

• Enable base material texture matching to decals

Links

• Installation

• Documentation

• Changelog

• Support Contact

• Community

Purchase

• Gumroad
  

Unity & Unreal Engine Renders

Imported into Unreal Engine

Unity Still Render

This is only the first version, there's still much I'd like to improve on but I'd like to start getting feedback so any suggestions or questions are welcome.  

de_cbble

Hey, really love how this looks and am considering getting it! I have a few questions about this (though maybe not all directly related to the tool?).

How would this integrate in a workflow with an external texturing program like Substance Painter? I'm also curious what you meant by a midpoly + decals workflow exactly.

I haven't seen a whole lot of behind-the-scenes stuff in professional models for games, and was wondering if a typical mesh would have that many decals (vs a traditional bake to texture), though I understand this is an example scene meant to show the versatility of the tool (which seems amazing!)

Functions like parallax occlusion mapping work in both Unity and Unreal?

And lastly your Maya viewport looks really good, how do you get it to look like that?

Sorry for so many questions

Xealot

Hey there, thanks for taking an interest.

de_cbble said:

How would this integrate in a workflow with an external texturing program like Substance Painter? I'm also curious what you meant by a midpoly + decals workflow exactly.

The plugin provides tools to export decal atlases and trim sheets with customizable channel packing, and the decals mesh is exported along with the main mesh in an FBX so nothing is stopping you from importing the files into other 3d tools, like Substance Painter.

As for the number of decals on the mesh, that's the benefit of using the midpoly + decals workflow. You're able to use hundreds or possibly thousands of geometry decals on a mesh at little performance cost, provided you're combining the decal textures into a decal atlas and the decals geometry into a single primitive. On top of that, the details of the mesh are not bound to one or a handful of large textures, so if used correctly you can achieve a much higher texel density than the traditional workflow. 

Games like Doom Eternal, Star Citizen and Alien Isolation relied on them for their game models.

I'm not gonna pretend to know as much as others do about the subject, but I recommend you research the midpoly + decal workflow vs the highpoly to lowpoly workflow (traditional bake to texture), they both have their pros and cons. There's plenty of good resources right here on polycount.

de_cbble said:

Functions like parallax occlusion mapping work in both Unity and Unreal?

Yeah, the plugins export tool exports shaders that utilize the default POM nodes provided by Unity and Unreal, you just need to import the files into your game project and hookup the material/texture connections. Eventually I'd like to get a POM shader in the Maya viewport to preview before exporting to game engines.

de_cbble said:

And lastly your Maya viewport looks really good, how do you get it to look like that?

I'm not sure what you're referring to about the viewport but I'm gonna guess that you mean the lighting of the model looks good?

I'm using Arnolds skydome light with an HDRI to render IBL (Image Based Lighting) in the viewport.

This is a quick video explaining the setup. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5af3oAWef9E

de_cbble

Xealot said:

The plugin provides tools to export decal atlases and trim sheets with customizable channel packing... 

Appreciate the full reply! So if I had, say, just a bunch of stickers/decals with custom texture maps I would make that in Painter on its own, then load them individually into the plugin for decal atlas creation and mesh placement? 

Xealot said:

I'm using Arnolds skydome light with an HDRI to render IBL (Image Based Lighting) in the viewport.

That is what I meant. Thanks a lot, I'll have to check this out!

Xealot

Yeah that's the idea. When it comes to stickers or logos you just save those as .png files in your image editor of choice and place them in a decal library folder that you point DecalMaster to. There's also a baking tool included so you can model out high poly surface decals in Maya then bake them into normal maps, but if you already have normal map decals from somewhere else you can also import them. 

Then you can just select one of your decals from the floating radial menu and place it using using the custom gizmos.

There's more details in the website/videos documentation if you feel like checking it out.