Decals

[Shelton]

I am still having difficulties with decals. I know there was a thread earlier concerning the corruption when a decal is placed on the model. Can someone direct me to that thread or tell me what to do? The decals when placed on the model appear fine, but when rendered they are stretched or pixelated.

 

Steve

[Shelton]

I can get it to work in 15d but not 15e.

 

Steve

[alano]

That thread was removed because of perceived negativity. In short, the best solution if you have this problem, is to make sure that the entire visable patch(es) are covered by the decal and the decal hasn't any alpha. You can also try decaling the entire model and then a decal with alpha should work OK on top of that. There has been a suggestion that a fix is in the works.

 

Alan

[Shelton]

Thanks for the reply. I pulled out the video that Will Sutton did. I have been able to apply decals his way without any problems.

 

Steve

[Shelton]

I am tired and can not remember this.

 

I have a decal that I have created in photoshop. I have applied alpha as I don't want the white background. I have imported it into AM, but when I apply it puts the white background. Can some remind what to do to remove the background

 

Steve

[Gerry]

it's been awhile since I worked with this but don't you select the decal's key color which will then knock out that color?

[NancyGormezano]

I have a decal that I have created in photoshop. I have applied alpha as I don't want the white background. I have imported it into AM, but when I apply it puts the white background. Can some remind what to do to remove the background

 

Are you sure you have an alpha channel for this file? - it will be a 32 bit tga versus a 24 bit tga. Jpg does not have alpha, I believe png's can have an alpha.

 

And are you sure your alpha channel, if there is one, is correctly selecting the area you want?

 

And if the alpha is correct, perhaps the groups to which it is applied is white? and therefore the back ground shows white.

 

And Gerry is correct - if there is no alpha, then you should be able to set the key color. But if there is an alpha, you will not be able to select a key color (I think, not sure)

[alano]

I prefer to use PNGs since alpha comes over without trouble. I think TGA's need Photoshop to save the alpha as a selection or something to make it save properly... or I could be smoking crack and I use PNGs because it's easier to say, "pings" than, "TaGas".

 

On a related note, is there a good way to update an image in AM after I've made changes to the file in Photoshop or whatever? I've been closing the project and reopening it but that just seems lame.

[Shelton]

You got it right on the mark. Changed a couple of settings in photoshop. PNG worked great. Thanks

 

Steve

[NancyGormezano]

On a related note, is there a good way to update an image in AM after I've made changes to the file in Photoshop or whatever? I've been closing the project and reopening it but that just seems lame.

 

I double click on the image file in the images folder (to open it up in a window) and that seems to get it to reload the new version.

[alano]

I double click on the image file in the images folder (to open it up in a window) and that seems to get it to reload the new version.

 

That's the ticket! Thanks.

[Gerry]

It's always updated automatically for me. Just make the changes to the image and save in Photoshop, and do a quick render in the modeling window and the updated decal is present.