Decals in Max

JordanW

Ok this is a silly question but what is the equivalent of decals in non-realtime rendering? Like if I was going to do blood splatter or a stain on a stairway in UE3 I would just create a decal actor and project it onto the stairs. If I'm creating something in max how would I go about doing this?

PS the stairway is just the easiest example I could think of, I just want to project a masked/translucent image onto complex geometry.

Tumerboy

duplicate the mesh under you're future decal, use the push modifier to raise it off the surface a bit (1/4 inch maybe?) Cut out the rough shape you need. Planar UV to your decal texture.

JordanW

I was afraid of that

Why cant max do this for me! I mean that's what decals in UE3 are :P

thanks for the quick response.

Tumerboy

LOL if there's an easier way I would LOVE to know about it :P

ETA: You COULD try doing some kind of projector light, with the texture you want . . .

sprunghunt

if you wanted to put a splatter or stain on a rough object in max I would do it using two different UV channels. You can use a separate uv channel for one material and one for another and then blend between the two using a mask that also uses the relevant UV channel. You can set the masked UV coordinates to not tile and it behaves almost the same as a projector.

PixelMasher

yea if its a complex or bendy shape I would use a second uv channel and apply the decal to that with a composite material in max.

any faces you dont want the decal to appear on, just scale those uvs down super tiny and put em on an area that is 100% tansparent so nothing shows up on them. or use a mask if you want to get a bit more complex like spung said.

glib

You could beg some of the resident scripters to make something up for you perhaps? I know we had a couple brilliant mel scripters at the last place I worked cook up something like that. It gave you a plane contrained to your camera, which you could aim where you wanted and texture the way you wanted, then 'shoot' it down on the geo below and it would match it as best it could. It often required a couple seconds of cleanup afterward, but it was pretty slick overall.

Michael Knubben

There was a script posted here a while back that did that, but I'm afraid it was maya. Chameleon?

edit: http://boards.polycount.net/showthread.php?p=828426
http://decalcreator.inlandstudios.com/

Eric Chadwick

Look up Conform in the Max help. Image here.
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/16647/#83374

Mark Dygert

Tumerboy wrote: »

LOL if there's an easier way I would LOVE to know about it :P

ETA: You COULD try doing some kind of projector light, with the texture you want . . .

I like you're crazy thinkin, you might be able to use the align highlight or align camera and then snap a light to the camera... But I think that will get messy.

I also like Eric's idea of using conform to wrap a piece of geo around another.

But what I normally end up doing, is just copy some geo, push it so it floats above re-uvmap it apply the decal, if I plan on baking it I just use a second UV channel and the composite map material.

http://www.onnovanbraam.com/index.php?tutorials/composite_maps/


I also really like the script that Pea posted, but its for Maya, never been ported and last time I checked you had to pay a small fee. If I used maya more I would buy it, along with half a dozen other plug-ins to make it useful but thats another gripe for another thread.

ArtsyFartsy

sprunghunt wrote: »

if you wanted to put a splatter or stain on a rough object in max I would do it using two different UV channels. You can use a separate uv channel for one material and one for another and then blend between the two using a mask that also uses the relevant UV channel. You can set the masked UV coordinates to not tile and it behaves almost the same as a projector.

x2 on this.

Michael Knubben

My post might have qualified as 'rubbing salt in the wound', I suppose