What is DECALmachine?

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Resources

Attention

If you want to report an error or have a problem READ THIS FIRST.

For installation help, see the Installation guide or the Readme.html supplied with the addon.
For information on decal creation, jump to Decal Creation.
For details on exporting decals, go to Decal Export Basics.
For questions you have or problems you may run into, see the FAQ.

All feature videos embedded in this document, can also been seen directly on youtube via the Feature Playlist.
There's also a Demo playlist, showcasing work on entire assets.

Preface

DECALmachine is a blender addon - a collection of tools and assets created to facilitate quick design thinking, iteration and exploration and doing so in a very non-committal, non-destructive way, especially in regards to detailing.

With DECALmachine you can avoid getting bogged down with technicalities and monotonous, laborious clean up work related to mesh topology. Instead you can just place your details, project them on curved surfaces, explore paneling and material variations, etc.

This hard surface detailing workflow is incredibly fast and versatile, very easy to handle and low on resources.

DECALmachine can be used on its own, or to complement other hard surface workflows, such as a bevel and boolean based approach used by HardOps, or the classic subdivision surface approach.
It will even work on models exported from Solids/NURBS based tools such as MoI3D or Fusion 360.

In addition to the tools to simplify and automate working with mesh based decals, there are sets of decal assets in 4 categories, ready to go, as well as tools to create custom decals - either directly in Blender or in bulk, based on externaly created images and bakes.

Keep in mind

The focus of DECALmachine is speed and flexibility in terms of Design and Detailing. Depending on how far you intend to take your designs and especially if you intend to use complex shader node setups or do complex texturing such as weathering, this might not be the best workflow, unless you are targeting a deferred rendering solution with mesh based decal support, which allows for selective channel blending, instead of just alpha blending as in Blender's Cycles.

Features

  • GroupPro support
  • Principled BSDF support
  • decal atlas creation
  • decal export to Unity3D, Unreal Engine 4, Substance Painter, Sketchfab, etc.
  • bake decals down: normal, ao, curvature, height and color maps
  • custom vertex normal workflow
  • instant and batch decal creation
  • integrated asset/decal loader
  • use decals on flat surfaces and project them on curved surfaces
  • 'cut' decal panel lines in a boolean-like manner
  • parallax adds convincing depth to normal mapped decals
  • retain sharp details at all scales, independent of texture resolution
  • decal and panel UV creation is automatic and base meshes don't need UVs
  • change panel decal width and panel type after a panel has been 'cut'
  • change the panel decal shape and direction after it has been 'cut'
  • retrieve the original un-pojected decal sources at any time
  • retrieve the cutters of panel decals at any time
  • material cutting and material decals
  • separate decal subset materials
  • separate panel materials for each side side and panel flipping to switch those sides
  • match decals to target materials
  • panel unwrapping for custom drawn or modified panel decals
  • quickly rotate decals in 45 degree steps without switching snap settings, and quickly rotate decal UVs in 90 degree steps
  • modal decal height adjustment
  • 116 decal assets supplied