That was a very interesting video, thanks for that I found it very helpful. So I thought I would give some decals a go in Max, and see if I have this right, or if I have gone a bit wrong. The decals were knocked up quickly and don't have normals, so please excuse their crap quality. But otherwise crits and any advice is…
Is it a common practice to blend ground using decals? Aren't decals expensive? Every guide I have seen recommends using vertex blending because it is cheap to do and with a few extra instructions you can make the transitions fit practically any scenario. Also because it does not take nearly as much memory as the texture…
Thanks Eric, Yeah I guess thats a bit daunting. I just can't find any info out there on decals - seems to be a huge lack of it! I've been through those links many times, but it is all about modularity, nothing much on decals. I've had a quick poke around with UDK levels, but couldn't find any decals again. But I maybe I…
Ah thanks Dustin. that brings me to another question I was going to get on to... As I understand it, decals are just a quad, that floats just off the ground or whatever, and have an alpha mask. Is that pretty much correct? They don't have any other special properties that I'm not understanding? In which case, I've heard…
So would this be one giant texture for the whole terrain? Or is it many smaller ones? If so how do you use many maps without creating many shaders? So when we are talking about decals, are we talking about a quad with an alpha texture? or are we talking about some sort of projection of the decal texture in the game engine?…
It's hard to judge, with test assets that generally look bad. What I meant by the tuts, is look at all the techniques they're using, and try them out in a full scene. Don't concentrate on decals, it's such a minor trick. Decals for blending between terrain and objects... best to put those on the ground, under/alongside the…
if you use vertex blending, you achieve much better results if the textures don't differ too much. for blending between unrelated materials like in your example, i would go for decals. as far as performance goes it's a matter of your engine. if your engine needs to keep all the textures of your vertex blending material in…
Definitely not common practice to put a skirt around the bottom of a mesh. It's generally expensive to use alpha blending, unless you optimize the shader like crazy (no lighting, or other shortcuts). Besides, it generally looks crappy. As to how often decals are used... I haven't used them much at all. So I'm kind of the…