Decal Features

Below you will find the included Decal Features, such as special fades and options like Parallax Occlusion Mapping. There are also links to paste the graphs into other Unreal projects. You can see all of these examples on the DecalFeatures Map.

/Content/DecalDesigner/Maps/DecalFeatures

These examples show a Decal actor in a difficult use case

  • The geometry being projected onto is complex and varied

  • The Decal actor is large, pointing straight downward and stretching across lots of surfaces perpendicular to the Decal direction

DBuffer - Color Normal Roughness

Pros

  • Full Material Response

  • Supports Baked Lighting

Cons

  • Side projection stretch

  • Side Normal/lighting distortion

  • Backface projection

DBuffer - Color Roughness

Pros

  • No side Normal/lighting distortion

  • Supports Baked Lighting

Cons

  • Side projection stretch

  • No Normal response

  • Backface projection

Translucent - Color Roughness

Pros

  • No side Normal/lighting distortion

Cons

  • Side projection stretch

  • No baked lighting

  • No Normal response

  • Backface projection

Angle Fade - DBuffer Color Normal Roughness

Pros

  • Angle projection control

  • Full Material response

  • Supports baked lighting

Cons

  • Opacity geometry faceting

  • Side Normal/lighting distortion

  • Uses screenspace derivatives

Backface Cull - DBuffer Color Normal Roughness

Pros

  • Angle projection control

  • Full Material response

  • Supports baked lighting

Cons

  • Opacity geometry faceting

  • Side Normal/lighting distortion

  • Uses screenspace derivatives

Depth Fade - DBuffer Color Normal Roughness

Pros

  • Depth projection control

  • Full Material response

  • Supports baked lighting

Cons

  • Side projection stretch (limited)

  • Side Normal/lighting distortion

  • Backface projection

Spherical Projection - DBuffer Color Normal Roughness

Pros

  • Spherical projection control

  • Full Material response

  • Supports baked lighting

Cons

  • Positioning is important. This Decal works best when placed inside a mesh, projecting outward

  • Decal volume hard edge

  • Side Normal/lighting distortion

  • Some patterns/Textures look better than others

  • Requires the use of DDX/Y derivatives

Spherical Projection + Sphere Mask - DBuffer Color Normal Roughness

Pros

  • Spherical projection control

  • Full Material response

  • Supports baked lighting

Cons

  • Positioning is important. This Decal works best when placed inside a mesh, projecting outward

  • Sphere mask limited use

  • Side Normal/lighting distortion

  • Some patterns/Textures look better than others

World Aligned UV - Translucent Color Roughness

Pros

  • No stretch

  • Cover larger areas with one Decal while maintaining UV scale

  • No side Normal/lighting distortion

Cons

  • Decal volume hard edge

  • WorldUV seams

  • No Normal response

  • No baked lighting

World Aligned UV + Separate Edge Mask - Translucent Color Roughness

Pros

  • No stretch

  • Cover larger areas with one Decal while maintaining UV scale

  • No side Normal/lighting distortion

Cons

  • One extra Texture (EdgeMask)

  • WorldUV seams

  • No Normal response

  • No baked lighting

TriPlanar UV - Translucent Color Roughness

Pros

  • No stretch

  • Adjustable TriPlanar blend

  • Cover larger areas with one Decal while maintaining UV scale

  • No side Normal/lighting distortion

Cons

  • Decal volume hard edge

  • Triplanar UV seams

  • No Normal response

  • No baked lighting

TriPlanar UV + Separate Edge Mask - Translucent Color Roughness

Pros

  • No stretch

  • Adjustable TriPlanar blend

  • Cover larger areas with one Decal while maintaining UV scale

  • No side Normal/lighting distortion

Cons

  • Decal volume hard edge

  • Triplanar UV seams

  • No Normal response

  • One extra Texture (EdgeMask)

Parallax Occlusion Mapping - DBuffer Color Normal Roughness

Pros

  • Illusion of depth

Cons

  • Can be expensive depending on number of steps being used in the Material Instance

  • Works only on upward facing surfaces. A Blueprint version of the Decal Actor could counter this and allow placement on walls etc. but it would be expensive

  • One extra Texture (Height)

Custom Input - DBuffer Color Normal Roughness

  • Use any of your own Textures as a Custom Input and mix it up

  • Accepts color or black and white Textures

  • All of the tweakable parameters also affect your Texture

  • You can even use Engine icons!

  • I used the free Iliad plugin to write the word "Fresh" above

See more on Custom Inputs and Masks

Texture Channel Packing Example

Masks can be optionally packed into the RGB channels of a single texture rather than individual textures per mask in order to save memory. Read more about Texture channel packing as well as the Graph parameters for enabling _ARM Textures

Pros

  • Uses 55% less memory - example 2K Packed Decal with all channels would be 11.1MB vs 24.8 MB for non packed

Cons

  • Slightly lower quality - DXT compression can introduce blocky artifacts in Textures due to cross talk, particularly in Red (Opacity). This "lower" quality isn't visible most of the time however

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