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Decals in blender?

Judge DeathJudge Death0 Posts: 0Member
I know someone here, polaris_004 I think, did an article on how to do decals easily in blender. I'd appreciate it if someone could give me a link to that article or another one telling me how to decal in blender after creating a decal in inkscape.

I need to make 6 decals and put them on the faces of a cube.

BTW, latest blender project: Digital dice for RPG themes:dierend2.jpg

Yes, I booleaned the digits into the die faces after getting the fonts and converting them to solids.
Post edited by Judge Death on

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  • Judge DeathJudge Death0 Posts: 0Member
    Actually scxratch the above. I solved the problem so, naturally, blender handed me a brand new one.

    I made 6 empty objhewcts and 6 decals, put the empties on the faces of the cubes and added the 6 decals, linking each to the appropriate empty to get the decalled faces I wanted. I made the empties children of the cube and the cube the parent to keep the vdecals facing the right faces.

    Hooray! it was perfect and beautoiful!

    Then I tried to duplicate the dice. No matter what I did I could not duplicate the cube wth the decalks, even selecting the cube and empties didn't work.

    I knmow there isn't one, but does anyone know a simple, easy fixe that doesn't involcve starting over (the universal blender fix!) or a process harder than manually putthing the decals on the second fice one by one?
  • Fre'dniFre'dni0 Posts: 0Member
    Judge, i tried that a log time ago. If i remember correctly, parent a empty to another. Then parent it to another. then when 1 parent is grandparent to the rest of the emptys, parent it to the cube. Then when you copy the cube, all the data from the original cube should be replicated
  • Judge DeathJudge Death0 Posts: 0Member
    Thanks, now I'm trying to do a UV map with all the 6 decals on it.

    Here's my current effort:


    Operative

    Joined: Fri Apr 24, 2009 7:03 pm
    Posts: 243 r
    Ok, I'm a SF gamer (Surprise) and I decided to try making copies of the classic dice used for the classic SFRPG "traveller", which had a special set of dice made for it long ago. I have a few, in bad condition as the artwork was just inked on, not stamped in and tended to chip away over time, unlike modern gamer dice which have the numbers stamped into the material and inked.

    Here's an image of real traveller dice: http://index.rpg.net/pictures/show-wate ... picid=4431

    I worked on some of my own and didn't quite get the image perfect, as the black ring needs to be a little thicker, the digits need to be a little bigger and aren't the exact font as the traveller dice originally had, but I think I did damn good for what I was doing.

    Here's some images of my blenderized traveller dice:

    http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/d2.jpg

    http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/d1.jpg

    http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/d3.jpg

    After hours of work making the decals in inkscape and finding an old SF style font that was close enough I got these done thanks to some articles on how to decal using empty objects to position the decals.

    I thought it was perfect until I tried to duplicate, where I for a blank black cube with no decals. Seems that a decal links to one object and won't transfer to a duplicate, if you retype the name of the object the decal's linked to it moves to it and leaves the original face blank.

    Oh, another problem with decals: if you move the file to another computer, the decals won't apply and you'll have to manually reenter the location of the image files to get them to work. Whee.

    I know that a map would solve it and made my first effort at uv unwrapping and mapping last night, thinking it might work since my very first effort at decaling was last night and it worked, including me making the decals and arranging them to match the digits on the original dice.

    Silly me, I couldn't get it to come even close to working. Now I'd already smoother and subsurfed the cube to make those nice rounded edges you want on dice, but I just could not get it to lay out as I'd hoped, I.E. 6 squares in a cross pattern, then select the faces to put the decals on. My efforts, after switching to a simple straight cube to make the nap hoping I could apply it to the smoother cube, got me at best 3 faces in a triangle formation, and no matter what I selected of did the image I selected would slap itself on one face and not move no matter what. If I tried loading a new decal onto a new face it would just change the decal on the face the first one went on..

    I had hoped to get 6 exposed faces and be able to slap a decal on each one to create the map, and be done. Looks like blender just won't let that happen. Any help?

    I did a lot last night, making the decals and applying them so it's not like I can't or won't try to learn this, I just wish it would quit kicking me in the groin every time I think I have it right.

    BTW, here's images of the decals I made in inkscape. The cube is textured in a dull black metal texture freely available as part of a free blender materials set:

    http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/?action=view&current=diedecal5.png&newest=1

    http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/?action=view&current=diedecal4.png&newest=1

    http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/?action=view&current=diedecal2.png&newest=1

    http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/?action=view&current=diedecal3.png&newest=1

    http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/?action=view&current=diedecal.png&newest=1

    http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d25/tanhauser/?action=view&current=diedecal1.png&newest=1
  • Judge DeathJudge Death0 Posts: 0Member
    Well, I did it and got the decals to work. then I find out I can't duplicate the dice because of how decals work. I've tried uvmapping the decals to the dice and have come to wish I'd never heard of blender.
  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]2 Posts: 3Member
    Got a Question, where can I get blender and how much?
  • Judge DeathJudge Death0 Posts: 0Member
    You actually had a couple questions. 1 was where to get blender, the other was how much it cost.

    The answers are:
    Where? www.blender.org. Get version 2.49b, the current one. 2.5 is an alpha.

    How much? The amount of money blender costs is equal to the amount of truth you hear listening to rush limbaugh for a week. Absolutely zero!

    Blender takes a lot of learning. For blender help I suggest www.blenderunderground.com. Get, save and watch the video tutorials by Apollos, they are essential. http://forums.blendernewbies.com/index.php is another good one.

    (BTW, were you that impressed with the dice thing I did here? If you want to copy what I did I'll teach you how, but you'll need inkscape, another free program. Incidentially the pic above wasn't a decal, it was boolean work.)
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