This tutorial series is an introduction to Decal Baking. It shows
- how to position decals for baking
- how to bake decals
- how to overlay a baked decal on materials or textures
Summary of Decal Baking
Decals are images that can add detail to an object. They are additional to the textures in the object’s material. Examples of things on an object that could be a decal are painted logos, bullet holes, and a wall-mounted computer monitor.
Decals can either be added to an object at run time or baked. Adding an item at runtime increases the amount of data that needs to be calculated for every scene, but it is very easy to do. For some things, this is appropriate. When a player in a game shoots a wall and leaves bullet holes, these bullet holes are an example of decals that you couldn’t put in place before runtime since their positioning is dependent on where the player shot the wall.
Other times you are just using decals to add detail to an object that isn’t going to change. These details are an excellent example of when you would want to use baked decals. For example, you have a decal of a rivet and several objects that would look good with riveted seams. You could bake that rivet decal into several places on several objects and add a lot of detail, not easily, but you can do it. There are several steps in the process that I am going to show you.