Decal not "taking" in v8.5p?

#1

I’ve been decalling a street model (street, sidewalks, etc) which neccesarily involved creating some patch areas where the details were a lot finer. So I’d have some large flat patches next to some very slender, long patches (like where the sidewalk dips between concrete slabs). Nothing too ridiculous in difference of proportions though.

I found in laying on a decal (let’s say for cobblestone) it would sometimes not take in the smaller patches- leaving them gray. But sometimes, it would- it seemed almost random. I tried a small decal (1000x) and a huge one (3000x) and got no difference, so I don’t think it’s an interpolation problem. Tried TGA, BMP, TIF. Same results.

I even redid the splines in those “problem” areas, by laying in all new ones to ensure I hadn’t connected them badly somehow. Still got random results.

And yes, I checked the normals and eliminated any hooks that may have been at fault.

The workaround I came up with was “fixing” all my geometry: widening the narrow patches as much as I could- while this compromised my model a little, at least the decal shows up!

It seems like patches for a decal must all be of a certain minimum ratio in size to each other in order to get consistent results in decal applications.

Anyone else encounter something like this? If so, did you find a workaround better than mine?

#2

-bump- anyone?

#3

Hi Dearmad. I did a quick test in 8.5p+ on my Mac. I had no problems with the decal or bump. Are my patch size variations close to yours? The decals are jpegs.

Cheers, Graham

#4

Actually that’s about the ratio I got mine to when they finally started to work. And if you copied and added your patches about 5 more times you’d be closer to the minimum number of patches needed to make the phenomenon work. Like I said, though, it seems almost random in occurance. SOME of the small pacthes will take, others will not. And then when I reapply, the ones not taking might and some of the others which used to would not- but ALWAYS the smaller/narrow patches would be the ones that would not take.

I thank you for giving it a try. And I didn’t try JPG (for obvious reasons) but maybe i will jkust for kicks to see- though I’ll still not use JPG in my final animation for this set- it’s too big and detailed for me to want any strange artifacts from JPG compression- even at level 1.

:wip:

#5

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.