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Decal Node

LeggyBlondLeggyBlond Posts: 124
edited June 2015 in Daz Studio Discussion

Does 'Anyone' know exactly how to use the 'Decal Node' ?

I've played around with it without any success, I've searched the Forums to no avail, the Documentation is little help and YouTube only seems to cover it for other software.

Post edited by LeggyBlond on

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436
    edited June 2015

    Select the thing you want to apply the decal to, then go to Create>New Iray Decal node.

    With the decal selected, go to the Surfaces pane, select the decal's only surface, and apply the settings you want - here I just loaded a photo into the base colour.

    In Parameters set the Face mode - Front here - and position the decal. You can also use other Projection types, simple UV mappings in effect, and adjust the specifics of the projection angle and position in Parameters. The references for other software will probably be useful for understanding the parameters.

    Decal_test.jpg
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    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
  • LeggyBlondLeggyBlond Posts: 124
    edited December 1969

    Richard Haseltine said:
    Select the thing you want to apply the decal to, then go to Create>New Iray Decal node.

    With the decal selected, go to the Surfaces pane, select the decal's only surface, and apply the settings you want - here I just loaded a photo into the base colour.

    In Parameters set the Face mode - Front here - and position the decal. You can also use other Projection types, simple UV mappings in effect, and adjust the specifics of the projection angle and position in Parameters. The references for other software will probably be useful for understanding the parameters.

    Hi Richard

    I had already tried that and have just tried it again but for whatever reason I get no image either viewing in Iray mode or rendered

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436
    edited December 1969

    Could you post screen shots with the viewport contents, the Scene pane showing the nodes, the Parameters pane and the Surfaces pane please.

  • LeggyBlondLeggyBlond Posts: 124
    edited December 1969

    Richard Haseltine said:
    Could you post screen shots with the viewport contents, the Scene pane showing the nodes, the Parameters pane and the Surfaces pane please.

    Hi Richard

    I have at least now got the Decal to work but using a sphere, the image appears on the bottom. I have tried all the Nodes Projection Parameters to move the image but apart from a few weird reactions I can't seem to move the projection (Image attached

    Projection.JPG
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  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436
    edited December 1969

    It will project onto the area enclosed by the bounding box of the node, along the Z axis as far as i can tell (not sure how, or if, you can change that). So to put it on the front of the sphere remove any rotations, then translate it up and forward to enclose part of the front of the sphere.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited June 2015

    If it is a Studio generated primitive, what happens if you change the primary axis when generating the sphere?

    I don't have the 64-bit Iray enabled version installed where I can easily check...

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • stem_athomestem_athome Posts: 518
    edited December 1969

    This is a similar issue as with the ies lights, the decals default to z-up.

    I get the impression that who implemented this (and the ies lights) is either copying over scripts from 3ds max (which uses z-up world), or they do not know DS is using Y-up world.

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436
    edited December 1969

    Z-up is not totally illogical, since it will project onto the surface facing the default camera.

  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,775
    edited December 1969

    Well, I've had some success with decals, but it has been a struggle. I don't understand how to set the Texture Coordinate System, Projection Type, or Normalize Projection Mode. I just fiddled around until I got something to work, but I have no understanding of what they do. It seems like I have to move the decal after creating it, or it doesn't show up on the item it was created for. When I created a decal on a shirt, the decal was at ground level and invisible. I had to move it up to shirt level, and there is noting to see except the bounding box outlines when I select it. As soon as I changed the model morph or pose, the decal was no longer in the right place, and was not visible again. So, am I doing something wrong, or is that just the limitation of the system?

    Creating a decal on a primitive at ground level was easier. I could use the surfaces tab to change bump, normal, cut opacity, etc. I could not get emissive to work on a decal, though.

    Primitives_Iray_Decal_3.jpg
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  • DogzDogz Posts: 898
    edited June 2015

    Had a try of this Decal node the other week, and couldn't get it working. I must have been doing something something wrong.
    I will say however, that some sort of visual indicators in the view port would be alot more intuitive, e.g showing where its pointed, right I know now its the Z axis because of this thread - but logical or not, users shouldn't have to guess or go looking on forums to work this out. Ditto of the projection, maybe an arrow indicator of sorts?
    Its like Depth of field for cameras, in the view port you can clearly see exactly where it starts and ends, please can we have something like this for the Decal Node? its rather annoying without.

    Post edited by Dogz on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436
    edited June 2015

    [strike]It has a bounding box - as far as I can tell the decal applies to mesh that intersects its bounding box.[/strike] Ah, sorry - a directional indicator, not a placement indicator.

    Post edited by Richard Haseltine on
  • DogzDogz Posts: 898
    edited June 2015

    Yes but It works in principle much like a camera or spotlight, so why not give it the same visual clues as to where it points, where it ends and which way it projects? If the cameras and lights were just bounding boxes too it would drive everyone bloody nuts :)

    Ahh now I see your edit. Sorry.

    Post edited by Dogz on
  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 456
    edited October 2015

    DECAL NODE - IS TRANSPARENCY/ALPHA POSSIBLE?

    Thanks to this discussion I tried out the Iris Decal Node feature but am confounded about how to set transparency for the decal.  Using .jpg and .png via photoshop the transparency works fine, but when I apply them in DAZ I can usually get my decals to appear on a black or white background but not transparent through to the object I applied it to.  Just placeing an emply decal I still could not set it to transparent so I am wondering if there is a way to do this?  Thanks.

    Post edited by FirePro9 on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,775
    FirePro9 said:

    DECAL NODE - IS TRANSPARENCY/ALPHA POSSIBLE?

    Thanks to this discussion I tried out the Iris Decal Node feature but am confounded about how to set transparency for the decal.  Using .jpg and .png via photoshop the transparency works fine, but when I apply them in DAZ I can usually get my decals to appear on a black or white background but not transparent through to the object I applied it to.  Just placeing an emply decal I still could not set it to transparent so I am wondering if there is a way to do this?  Thanks.

    Did you put the transparency map into the Cutout Opacity channel of the decal surface? That works for me.

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 456
    edited October 2015

    Barbult, thanks for your help!  That works, however it took me a while to figure out that the image file/transparency map has to go into both the CUTOUT OPACITY slot and in the BASE COLOR slot.  I tried the cutout opacity only and my image was displaying as grey scale only, then I figured out it is kinda masking my base color image.  OKAY now for some decal fun.

    Post edited by FirePro9 on
  • barbultbarbult Posts: 24,775

    Great! Glad to hear you got it working.

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 456
    edited October 2015

    IRAY DECALS - Look Great on Black Backgrounds Not Great on White Backgrounds 

    After playing around with Iray Decals I am wondering if I am doing something wrong.  The decals I apply show up great when they are on a black background but get lighter and lighter as the background color gets lighter.  Attached is an example of the same decal applied to a black cube, grey cube and white cube.  I'd like to get the white cube decal to show as bold as the black cube decal but I found no slider in the Surfaces(color) tab that helped fix this.

    Is is possible to get a nice bold looking Iray Decal on an object that is white in color? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.  Thanks.

    iray-decal-wgbcubes.jpg
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    Post edited by FirePro9 on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436

    Your attachment didn't attach. What material settings are you using for the decal, and what decal settings on the node?

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 456
    edited October 2015
    Richard Haseltine said:

    Your attachment didn't attach. What material settings are you using for the decal, and what decal settings on the node?

    Attachement reloaded above.

    OKAY, finally discovered what I was doing wrong.  I placed my full color decal image into the Iray Decal Node Surfaces Tab BASE COLOR slot .  Then I placed a Black & Transparent Mask copy of the same image into the CUTOUT Opacity slot, and that is the image I get above.  I went back to photoshop and made a Black & White Mask copy of the image and stuck it into the CUTOUT Opacity slot instead of the Black & Transparent mask  and BINGO, that did it!

    Thank you all for your help!

     

    Post edited by FirePro9 on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436

    Try doing the on-black render and saving it, then change it to on-white and render that, save, and overlay the two in an image editor with the blend mode set to Difference - I suspect the decals are the same colour in both, the difference is down to the relative contrast or lack thereof, in which case you should see white for the background with  a black silhouette of your image..

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 456
    edited October 2015
    Richard Haseltine said:

    Your attachment didn't attach. What material settings are you using for the decal, and what decal settings on the node?

    Attachement reloaded above.

    Here are my iray decal surface settings:

     

    Richard Haseltine said:

    Try doing the on-black render and saving it, then change it to on-white and render that, save, and overlay the two in an image editor with the blend mode set to Difference - I suspect the decals are the same colour in both, the difference is down to the relative contrast or lack thereof, in which case you should see white for the background with  a black silhouette of your image..

     

    Attached is a further experiment with the Iray Decals which seems to confirm that the image mask you use, and which goes in the CUTOUT OPACITY slot of the SURFACES Tab for the Iray Decal Node, probably should be white if you want it not to bleed the background color through the decal.  In the attached image the left boxes are with my decal image in the BASE COLOR slot only, the middle boxes show the image I placed in the CUTOUT OPACITY slot (but for viewing purposes I actually placed in the base color slot so we can see it accurately), and then the right hand boxes show the result of the two.  So white = no bleed, black = full bleed, grey/color = partial bleed.

     

     

    Iray-Decaltest-usewhitemaskforcutoutopacity.PNG
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    Post edited by FirePro9 on
  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436

    Yes, that's right on the Cutout Opacity colour.

  • GranvilleGranville Posts: 696
    edited March 2016

    Here is an experiement with Faveral Le Village set. When I loaded the decal it was at the middle of the entire bulding. But thanks to the tip by barbult, I was able to use the bounding box to manipulate on to the lit up (emmisive sign). Note I am still working on all the other surfaces. They haven't been optimized for iray or closeup yet.

     

    tabac decal sm.png
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    Post edited by Granville on
  • JimbowJimbow Posts: 557

    You can also stack decals on top of each other, which is how I darkened the floor below the puddle in this:

     

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  • JerifeJerife Posts: 272

    You can find some tips here LeggyBlonde http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/75203/wtut-decal-will-s-iray-decal-tutorial

     

    By the way Richard is there a way to 'bake' the decal once happy with it? As to export the texture achieved on a prop os something. THAT would be really usefull 

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 102,436

    I'm not aware of a way to bake a decal onto a base texture.

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