simple decaling question...

[Slipin Lizard]

Just wondering for people who have done a lot of decaling, what resolution do you save your decals at? I've been using AI to create decals, save them as 32 bit Targa files, and I choose 300 dpi for resolution instead of 72 dpi for screen resolution. My thinking was to use the highest resolution I could so that if I'm getting close up on a model the decaling will still hold up and look good. Is this correct? Or am I just adding unnecessary file size to the decals? My final destination for most projects is to end up as an AVI file going to DVD.

[heyvern]

If you are talking about that fantastic keyboard model...

 

... like you said... if you plan to get real close... higher is better.

 

remember that saving as 300dpi is the same as 72 but a larger pixel dimension.

 

Since AI is vector based... you have to define the dpi on export. AI is "resolution independant".

 

This is probably why you have trouble with the "units matching" from AM to AI.

 

On your keyboard model you have one of those pain in the but problems with decals and resolution... TEXT and SHARP STRAIGHT LINES!

 

Text and straight lines are always a pain and require "higher" resolution so it looks "clean". On top of that you need an alpha on them so they shows over other decals... so you can't even use a grayscale image to save on size.

 

Determining the proper resolution in your case would be based on how you are presenting that model. If it is in an animation and the camera will zoom in on details of it... you need high res decals (what you have currently is more than enough... almost too big actually).

 

(Try this... with your choreography window open in AM double click on one of your decal images in the images folder in the PWS. Press shift+Z that is 100% of it's "natural" size. See how big it is in comparison to the chor window? really big.)

 

If the model is not going to be seen that closely you could easily drop down the res output from AI to 150... remember this is AI... not photoshop. In Photoshop I keep everything at 72 and change the size using the pixel dimensions.

 

... trial and error is the key. Drop the res... do a full size render and see if the decal looks okay. If it pixelates too much for your liking then bump it back up.

 

If you do this with one decal the same would apply to all of them most likely.

 

Vernon "!" Zehr

[Slipin Lizard]

Vern thanks for all your help. You too Robotcat. You were both very helpful and patient. In the end, I figured Vern was right, that all those decals based on just those four CP's was just overload. When Robocat got the same result, I figured it was good enough to say that was the problem and move on. I didn't really want to mess with the geometry, I did give it a shot, but as I got started I realized it was going to be a real pain, so I brought an image from AM into Illustrator, and built the decal as one large piece. Worked out well. Thanks for all your help you two, you're da bomb! I posted this same pic in the Showcase forum, along with two close ups if you want to check it out. Thanks again!

[heyvern]

Actually... after looking at your model, you could just try extruding the end of that big section a couple of times and slide those cross sections into the "body" of the model.

 

This would be a quick and easy test to see if that would be enough splinage to solve the multiple decal problem. I have found that you don't need a TON of additional splinage for decaling. Sometimes just one or two "extra" patches can help.

 

------------------

 

I had this exact problem a loooong time ago on one of the image contest entries... actually it was my first.

 

I had a cardboard box with the surface torn of slightly on the front. I wanted to add a second decal of the corrugated material over the larger decal of the cardboard.

 

This was when I discovered that low patch count causes problems with multiple decals. Basically my second decal had "bits missing" because it wasn't hitting the edges of ANY patch.

 

All I did was split the surface twice horizontally by extruding two extra splines on the ends of the box front. So... instead of one patch I had 3. Worked like a charm. I enlarged my second decal and made sure it covered an entire patch on all four sides.

 

I may be wrong... but I always try to make sure my decals "overlap" and cover at least one entire patch... I never have any trouble with them that way.

 

Fantastic model. Looks great. Congrats!

 

 

Vernon "!" Zehr