Decals¶

Decals put grime, stains, cracks, posters and signs on a surface. They are drawn a hair closer to the camera than the wall behind them and blended over it, so they never flicker against the wall or against each other.

Placing a decal¶

1. Find the material

   Look it up in the Materials panel, the search box at its top left helps.

2. Hold Alt and drag it onto a face

   The card next to the cursor reminds you that Alt drops a decal.

   

3. Let go

   You should see the decal land where you dropped it as a one meter square, 32 by 32 units, facing out of the face.

   

A decal is a normal mesh, so move, rotate and scale it like one. With it selected, the Inspector shows Decal (blended, double sided) ticked, and the position and size fields to place it exactly.

That same checkbox turns any thin mesh into a decal, for one with a custom outline.

Soft edges stay soft. For a hard cut, use a material in alpha scissor mode, see Transparency.

Projected decals¶

A regular decal is flat. For a stain that wraps over a step or a pipe, use a projected decal instead, an entity with the trenchdot_decal.gd script like the demo's infodecal. Set its material key to a material name like base/stain. It shines the material onto everything inside its box, props included, and costs more, so stick to regular decals on flat surfaces.