CompuServe Messages

Pete, >>decal'n one side of a sphere or cylinder… If you use cylindrical or spherical mapping, and place your decal in the center of a larger bitmap, you can control the placement nicely. I guess you know that if you use the 'Decal' button, you have to pay attention to the upper left pixel and border of the map (pg 9-30). If you make the material as above and use 'Tiled', you don't have to deal with the "upper left pixel transparency" issue. However, your map will be much larger for a given decal resolution and take more memory to render, etc., so it is generally better to make your decal with the appropriate border. Planar mapping will always 'shine' thru the other side on the object level, unless you detach faces into elements. Depending on the geometry, you might detach just the faces that will contain the decal, reattach the faces, and apply your map on the element level. Sometimes it is worthwhile to boolean out a chunk of surface as appropriate to allow flexible material placement. JKJ