I'm in the process of assembling models for my first solo music video. At the start of the song I need a barmaid and decided to use "Gala" from the Extra's DVD. The model has extensive attention to detail, but when I render from the backside there is a "strip" anomaly in the decal somehow. Perhaps it was intended that way, but to me it is quite distracting.

I could use another model. I could replace the decals on the dress. There are a number of workarounds I could employ, but then I would not know what was happening, or why it was happening, and as always, the goal is to understand more completely this wonderful software.

I know there are a number of "get-to-the-bottom-of things" minds here on this forum and was hoping that this issue might intrigue one of them enough to arouse their curiosity. I'm using version 15J but I more than suspect that it is not so much a version issue as it is a decal issue. Thanks for looking.

First step.... just look at the decal.

Does it have that on it? If it does then it's a simple matter to paint over it, save a new version and point the model to that instead of the original.

there are three decals that are used with the dress. I saved the model under another name and tried to modify these images by extending the sides farther out to perhaps "overlap and "fill in" the strip on the back. But that didn't seem to do it.

Here is the model in a zip file with the decals. If I'm violating any rules, somebody let me know and I'll take it down.

None of those look like they have a big rectangle on them, so it's not the bitmap itself.

Next guess, I'd go into the decals folder and "recall" the position of each one and see if perhaps they are missing some portion of the mesh.


or...

Most of the dress is semitransparent? Does the Group that has that transparency setting in it not include those patches at the back? They would be easy to add back in.

Not knowing what you mean by "recall" the decals, I did some exploring in the decal section of the model in the PWS.

I came up with this when I clicked <properties> in the menu that came up after I right clicked the Stamp for the "pea"

the mesh is flattened and stretched for the stamping, but the back section (I've highlighted the splines with green) is also stretched but it looks like it is not getting the stamp.
I'll see if I can add a second stamp to cover that strip.

Edit: A second "Stamp of that decal did not register or 'take" on the dress. No idea why.

I noticed that the highlighted horizontal splines that are connected, stretched across the backside are where the strip does funny things.

The strip that appears without a decal is because ..uh...no decal has been applied to those patches, or more likely was inadvertently removed from those patches. Gala is an old, old model, and the old girl has been around the A:M block many times. Oh yes. My guess is that all the version changes have not been kind to her.

If you select one of the patches that appears to be without a decal using the patch select tool (purple thing), and then right click on that patch/remove decals...you will see that no decals are assigned to those patches. You will have to redecal the dress, ie reapply the "pea"? decal (not sure which one).

In ver16b, I do not get the option to recall the position for that decal container (planar, looks like the dress was flattened). However you may be able to hide everything but the undecaled strip, with careful positioning, and stamp with the pea container.

If you can't get it to your liking, you may have to reflatten the dress, and reapply the map. For a dress like that, if you don't want to go the flatten route, I would suggest use cylindrical mapping, rather than planar, and all patches will get covered easily

thanks, Nancy, I'll play with that. I know Gala's been around a while. . . who knows. . . maybe this bit part could jump start her comeback.

You could just remove the transparency map from the decal container, it's not needed.

Thanks for your response, Mark. I'll play with that and see what it does.

I deleted the stamp for the "pea" and re applied it using "cylindrical" and that got rid of the strip.

I'm curious about the term "container" for the decal, I noticed that there are three decals in the container, I suppose you add the images one at a time into the decal and tell them what kind of decal they are?

Yes. You can "stamp" one image to the mesh, then add other images to the decals image folder to use the same stamp.

The decal container determines how each of the patches gets mapped to the images (3D to 2D, or xyz to uv coordinates) - the mapping type algorythm can be planar, cylindrical, spherical

Each image in any decal container can be a different type, but uses the same mapping as the decal container. The types are color, bump, spec size, etc, etc. You can have multiple images of all the same type, with varying percentages. The last image in the container will take preference if you have, for example, 3 color images, all at 100%

Every time you apply the decal container to some patches, you get a new stamp. (All the image types in that container get applied with that stamp)

You can stamp a patch with multiple decal containers, each having a different mapping type. The last decal applied will take precedence.

So eg, you could decal the dress patches first using cylindrical mapping to cover all the surfaces for a general material color, texture (bump, etc). And then apply another decal, a planar type to just those patches that might need some special detail.

The order would be to apply the cylindrical first, then the planar.

Thanks for the help and info, Nancy, once again. I've copied your last post and put it in my desktop folder that is entitled "Nancy's Decals" and have it archived.

I deleted the transparency decal with no ill effect Mark, Thanks.

Robert, any input that I get from you always helps.

Gala will now be able to do her job more than adequately.

One last post, here is a shot of Gala at work. She is a barmaid in the first 20 seconds of my new video production.

looking good.