Custom Decals

Decal blood splats

Decals are textures which can be mapped to environment objects & terrain. Their main use is adding detail and variation to the scenery. Blood splats, ambient shadows and footprints use them too.

Files

To create a custom decal, the following files are needed:

• XML File - What you select when loading the decal
  • Color Map File - The texture for the decal
  • Normal Map File - Has normal information for the decal TODO: is this necessary or are there fallback files?

XML File

This file is what you load in the engine to make the decal show up. It links to a color texture and a normal texture that make up the decal. To avoid issues we recommend using .tga as texture format, though .png works most of the time as well.

<?xml version="2.0" ?>
<Type>generic</Type>
<DecalObject>
    <ColorMap>Data/Textures/Decals/Rocky/black_dust_c.tga</ColorMap>
    <NormalMap>Data/Textures/diffusebump.tga</NormalMap>
    <ShaderName>decal</ShaderName>
</DecalObject>

ColorMap
Path to the texture file.

NormalMap
Path to the Normal map image file.

ColorMap

Can be created with any image manipulation program.

Normal Map Image File

Can be created with any image manipulation program. Must have the same dimensions as the texture file. TODO: is this True?