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Introduction

Exporting Decals as well as the decaled Objects themselves is done in a sequence of steps outlined below.

Before you start however, make sure to go to the DECALmachine preferences and setup the export path to your liking - or leave it as it is.

The default path is DECALmachine/assets/export

What is a Texture Atlas?

Packing a texture Atlas is a method of fitting a number of individual textures into a single texture image and arranging them next to each other.
This is done for performance reasons, but in our case also for usability reasons.
For instance, if your asset uses dozens of different decals, you really don't want to deal with managing materials for each of them in Unity/Unreal/etc.
So instead, a single material is created for each Atlas(each packing solution), which is then applied to a number of decals.

Furthermore a single Atlas may be used across multiple assets and so it becomes a very effecient way to texture, detail and create materials for your work, and is also very effecient for the engine of your choice to load textures and render your assets.

Process

decalexportpiefinal The final state of the DECALexport pie menu. Bring it up by pressing CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + E

The basic export process goes like this:

  • create Atlas Groups
  • initate Atlas pack or use existing Atlas
  • create Export Groups
  • export or bake down

Once you have gone through these steps the Export or Bake Down button will appear at the bottom of the DECALexport pie.
At this point, you can either make a specific selection or select nothing and press it.

Selecting nothing will automatically select all export Groups.
Selecting individual export groups will specifically just export or bake down these.
You can also select objects that aren't part of any export group and they will be included in the export(but not in a bake down).

For simple assets, that whole process can be done in less than a minute.
However, while you may be able to fly through the process, you should still have a good understanding what is going on behind the scenes so you can avoid mistakes or solve any problems you may encounter.

Read on for a detailed breakdown of each of the steps and the different options you have in the process.