Advanced Member popwfx Posted November 28, 2012 Advanced Member Report Share Posted November 28, 2012 Hey again... another question as I paint more, I've been using materials for painting alot and occasionally need a logo or decal as a transparent PNG that I load as a material and use it to paint onto a surface. This is great and all, but doing it that way is permanently painted to that current layer. What would be really nice (and I don't know if this is possible with 3DC or just not intuitive for me) is for me to load an alpha'ed PNG with color, spec & depth images and have it projected (like a movie projector) to surface of the object I'm painting and therefore warped based on the surface normals, but have that image translatable and rotatable dynamically - i.e without actually painting to the layer - or rather, it's like in photoshop being able to have the layer there but nudge it around as opposed to actually stamping it down on the surface. So that later if I want to tweak it, I can easily rotate, scale or transform that decal and dynamically slide it all over the surface of the object (like a sheet of rubber) without having to load the material and place it with the material painter and stamp it down. Does this make sense? And is this currently already possible? Sorry but it's just not obvious to me despite the manual and the videos I've seen. Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted November 28, 2012 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted November 28, 2012 Try the Transform Copy Tool, and see if that works for you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Member Psionic Posted November 28, 2012 Member Report Share Posted November 28, 2012 1. Create a decal on it's own layer and name it. 2. Select the Copy/Transform tool in the paint room (below the clone tool) and tick 'Erase old position' then select the decal using the rectangle select (or other 'E' panel select tools) 3. Move the decal about, scale, rotate etc and press Enter to re-apply it to the mesh, Escape to return/cancel. You can leave 'Erase old position' off if you want to simply clone the decal to other areas etc. Hope this helps a bit... EDIT: ^ beat me to it ;-)) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted November 29, 2012 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted November 29, 2012 This is awesome. Thanks guys. Not exactly how I envisioned it working - but useful for the purpose nonetheless! I especially like that Copy Visible Layers remembers the layering when stamped down again. Good idea whoever thought of that. And Nice video explaining thoroughly all the ins and outs of the tool. Most videos just have someone putzing around with the tools, this one was fantastic in that all the odd questions that pop into mind ("but what about what happens when you don't have enough layers?" etc) he answers. Though one question wasn't answered but I can play with it to figure out. If you save a project with layers 2 & 3 and then you later load it into another .3b file where you want those to paste to layers 7 & 8, it would be nice to make those saved layer numbers relative or editable - but I'm already asking too much for that feature. This is pretty powerful as is. So thanks for the tip! I'll play with it right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted November 29, 2012 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted November 29, 2012 Followup question that comes to mind: * Is it possible to Align (or Align and Distribute if you have multiple layers loaded) one of these decal stamps on a surface? i.e. can I have a decal loaded and then have a selection somehow (either a surface, the whole object, or some polygons selected) and then say have align positioning buttons like in photoshop where I could automatically align the decal to the vertical center of the poly-selection or the horizontal center of the selection or both? This alignment would be based on the alpha color (or depth selectable) image width/height. So like imagine I had a logo I want to stamp down smack dab in the center of a car's hood - I could select the car's hood surface material (or manually select some polys) and then pixel perfectly center it onto the projection. Can this be done like I describe? thanks again for the help! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reputable Contributor AbnRanger Posted November 29, 2012 Reputable Contributor Report Share Posted November 29, 2012 Followup question that comes to mind: * Is it possible to Align (or Align and Distribute if you have multiple layers loaded) one of these decal stamps on a surface? i.e. can I have a decal loaded and then have a selection somehow (either a surface, the whole object, or some polygons selected) and then say have align positioning buttons like in photoshop where I could automatically align the decal to the vertical center of the poly-selection or the horizontal center of the selection or both? This alignment would be based on the alpha color (or depth selectable) image width/height. So like imagine I had a logo I want to stamp down smack dab in the center of a car's hood - I could select the car's hood surface material (or manually select some polys) and then pixel perfectly center it onto the projection. Can this be done like I describe? thanks again for the help! I don't think it's that complex. You could go to an orthographic view that's perpendicular to the spot you want to apply the decal > VIEW Menu > click/enable 2D Grid > use the little navigation panel just for the 2D grid in the upper right hand corner of the viewport > align the grid appropriately > move decal into place, using the Transform Copy tool. Snapping to grid is on by default. You can disable it in the VIEW menu. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Advanced Member popwfx Posted November 30, 2012 Author Advanced Member Report Share Posted November 30, 2012 thanks, that works mostly - not as pixel perfect as I'd like but it works! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carlosan Posted December 6, 2012 Report Share Posted December 6, 2012 Hi. Is enter working for you ? I pressed ENTER and nothing happens.. Im using transform / copy tool but need to warp the image pasted, over a curved surface. I need to place a tatoo over an arm following the curved mesh copy/paste let scale and deform.... but cant find how to warp. The tool do a plane camera projection... so when i place the image... the image is deformed. is not following the mesh surface ty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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