XDECAL™ ****User-guide

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Chapters

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Getting started

Basics

Popup

Shader Editor

Decal Gizmo

Decal Palette

Default Material Library

Decal Assets & Texture Library

Tutorials

Changelog

Testimonials ◤◢

Additional info

Table of contents

Shader Editor

Some features related to the Decal Popup are available in the Shader Editor:

XDECAL™ Tab

The XDECAL™ tab in the sidebar will contain the related UI controls from the Decal Popup for the active material.

XDECAL™ Submenu

The XDECAL™ submenu in the right-click (context) menu also provides the following utilities:

Node Settings

Node Settings. Shows a dialog which allows you to set up the active node's main properties (which can then be accessed in the Decal Popup), and some additional settings.

• Mix: for a node connected to Shader-type node(s), these options determine how the node's output will be mixed with the corresponding output of the surface material during the decal embedding.
  • Mix-socket: the name of the input socket that would be connected to the corresponding output of the surface material. This can be useful for advanced mixing effects (such as in the Stencil Bump/Bevel/Normal materials from the addon's default material library), but otherwise you should leave this property empty.
    • If there are multiple potential inputs with the same name, they will be listed with an “#index” (#1, #2, etc.) suffix.
    • If you use this feature, make sure that such a node is connected to only one input of one Shader-type node.
  • By Alpha: by default, channel outputs are mixed in accordance with the decal's Alpha channel, but you might want to turn this option off for nodes whose effect is already dependent on Alpha (you can see an example of this in the Stencil Bump material from the addon's default material library).
• Label: the node's label. In some cases, labels can have special meaning:
  • If it contains the # symbol, this node will be treated as "not containing a decal image / PBR channel", and ignored when replacing images or calculating decal's aspect ratio. This can be useful for some auxiliary textures (for an example, see the Damaged Color material in the default library).
• Is decal: this toggle only shows for Image nodes. It indicates whether this node is treated as "not containing a decal image / PBR channel". When clicked, adds or removes the # symbol in the label.
• Group: the group of material controls to which this node belongs. The controls of any nodes with an identical group name will be displayed together in the Decal Popup, inside a box. If the group name is not empty, it will be displayed above the corresponding controls, and the box will be foldable (unless the only contents of the group is a single socket property, in which case the group name will be used as the property label).
• ID: node's unique identifier within the group (used to disambiguate nodes when copy-pasting parameters between materials).
• Buttons: if enabled and the node contains some sort of UI besides the sockets (e.g. toggles, dropdowns, color ramps, etc.), these UI controls will be displayed in the Decal Popup.
• Inputs: whether node's input sockets will be shown by default.
• Outputs: whether node's output sockets will be shown by default.
• The rest of the dialog contains a list of the visible unconnected inputs and connected outputs (with the dot on the left side and the right side, respectively). For each socket, you can toggle on/off whether they will be displayed in the Decal Popup, and optionally provide a custom label for the socket.
  • Note: the listed socket names can be different from the socket labels you see on the node itself, but their relative order will be the same.

Attribute: Select

Attribute: Select - Shows a list of valid custom properties, gathered from all the objects that use the active material or node group. Clicking on a list item would set the corresponding property name as the attribute name of the selected Attribute nodes.

Attribute: Defaults

Attribute: Defaults - Shows a dialog which allows you to edit default values of the selected Attribute nodes. This value will be used by the addon to automatically initialize custom object properties on decals when they are instantiated.

Attribute: Value

Attribute: Value - Shows a dialog which helps you to set up the active Attribute node and the custom properties on objects which use the active material or node group. If the attribute type is not Object or Instancer, it will be switched to Instancer, and if the attribute name was empty, the node's default values will also be overwritten

• Name: the name of the attribute / custom property.
• Scope: what objects would be affected (active object, selected objects, scene objects, all objects).
• Mode: what will happen when a property with the same name exists / doesn't exist:
  • Update existing: update values / settings, for objects where property exists.
  • Initialize new: add a new property, only if it did not exist.
  • Override: add a property if necessary, and override any previous values / settings.
• The rest of the options have generally the same meaning as in Blender's Edit Property dialog.