Text Decal

[Anonymous]

I have an interesting (to me) problem.  I want to put text in a frame and then give the text thickness and then add a decal for the face of the text in render mode.  The problem is when I apply the decal.  Even if I select more than one text letter, the photo decal only ends up on the first of the selected text letters and nothing on the remaining letters.  The idea is decal a series of letters or words or sentance such that all of the text appears to be cut out from a photo,.  Somewhat akin to cutting letters out of a magazine and pasting them on a page to make text.  Except I want all of the text to appear to be cut from a singel photo.  Like cutting lmultiple letters from a single photo.

I can select letter one and decal it from a photo and then select letter 2 and decal it from the same or a different photo but that is not what I hope to achieve.

Any thoughts on how this can be donez/

Steve Dollar 

[colin.smith]

Hi @Anonymous

Do you have an example of what the finished render should look like?

Colin

[Anonymous]

Here is an example of an antique metal sign being used as a dedal for the letter H.  If one selects more than one letter then the first letter looks like this and all subsequent ones remain with no dedlal.

Steve

[Anonymous]

Here is an example of an antique metal sign being used as a dedal for the letter H.  If one selects more than one letter then the first letter looks like this and all subsequent ones remain with no dedlal.

Steve

[colin.smith]

Hi @Anonymous, 

I suggest you replace the image file of one of the shaders rather than trying to use the decal tool.

The decal tool acts like a sticker - it makes a flat mesh based on the image file and then lays the mesh on the object you selected.

It works well for labels, it doesn't work that well for images that you want to cover an entire object like a screen print.

In the image below you can see how I used a flower print on a gardening trowel to get an effect I think you are looking for.

Because this is a texture map you can see parts where there is stretching of the image on the handle due to the projection type.

For this example I used the Cherry Wood and replaced the image file with one of my own.

Open the editor and click on the Advanced button.

Under the IMAGE parameter click on the name of the file, this will open a dialog box where you can pick a new image to replace the wood image.

If the image needs adjusting (scale, color, brightness) you can click on the down arrow next to the image swatch and pick Edit Image.

The image I chose was very small. 

Once you have the image in the material you can use the texture map editor to move and rotate the image on the object.

If you chose Face it will just apply the chosen face.  If you choose body it will apply to the entire object.  You can see the differences below.

Hope that helps.

Colin