Decals!!

It would be nice to have textures that can be overlayed.

For instance: If I have a window and I want to put bullet holes in it, right now I have to use Photoshop or PSP (or similar) and create a custom texture for the whole window that has the bullet holes where I want them.

If we had decals, I could just create the window as normal, and slap a few "bullet hole" decals on it, and viola!

This is common in map-building programs for various 3d games (Quake, Half Life, etc.)

Also, if I want to hang a sign on my door, I have to either a) create a custom door texture that includes the sign, or b) create a "signboard" prim that has a sign texture. With decals, I could just plop the sign texture on the existing door prim as a decal. No extra prim, no custom texture that may only be used for a few days and then be wasted space on the database.

If this were implemented, it would be more useful if a prim face could have more than one texture (with z-order, so they can overlap.) And their own transparency settings.

This would do wonders for the tattoo market, too. You could place tattoos on your av wherever you want, and have multiple tatts being used, without having to create a separate texture for each combination of tatts you sometimes want to wear.

There are a myriad of uses for decals:
- insignia on clothing/attachments/equipment
- "maker's marks"
- reduce prim usage by allowing one texture to partially overlap another, so that you don't have to have a separate prim for each texture being used.

This would save us money in upload fees, reduce prims needed for some advanced designs, and provide an additional method/impetus for improving the overall appearance of builds. (It would also help break up the monotony on some builds that have large concrete/wood slabs.)

YES! PLEASE! Decals are common in 3D Animation software, and the ability to overlay multiple textures on one prim would save money and give us all way more flexibility.

Great idea Grim!

It might even make bump-mapping possible? hee hee hee.

Also, I dont know if this is the effect you're looking for, but I just realized that if you wanted to, you could do something here now that might be fun.... with a script, you could make your gun or your bullet actually, slap on a flat, clear texture of a bullet hole, on to whatever it collides with. So in effect, you could go around shooting walls n'stuff, leaving a bullet riddled building behind, hee hee hee. also, you can set these to die after a certain amount of time (say 1 min or maybe 20 seconds, etc...) which then refunds the money and clears up the wall for a fresh assault, hee hee hee.

That could be lots of fun ???? target practice range?? I'm currently working on a target range, where you shoot soda cans This could work as well.

Love Ingie

You can sorta do decals already, though you have to use an extra prim to do it. Just make a texture with an alpha channel that makes everything transparent but the bullethole, paintstain, crack, sticker, or whatever. Create a box. Set the tint to 128,128,128 and transparency to 90. Then go to select texture mode and select just one side of the box. Apply your texture to it. Set its tint color to white and transparency to 0. You how have a decal you can position over a wall or floor or whatever. I do this to add things like storm drains or other small details to large surfaces.

I think the main idea for decals is to be able to do it without using extra prims. Just the ability to apply multiple textures on ONE prim would be nice!

Can't argue with you there Just figured I'd throw that out there for anyone who hadn't thought of it, since it's the only option we have for decals currently.

Actually, if you go to my build in Venice, you'll see that I used that "decal" idea for the blocks .... what the heck are those corner things called??? hee hee hee, that are at the corner of my building. I found one problem there, though, SL game engine is trying to put the smallest of shaddows at the edges, where it shouldn't be, hee hee hee. Oh well, It's not too bad, and easier than doing it on a static texture, I had a much easier time putting the texture up that way than if I would have had to be more particular with the texture mapping, you know? (er... lazy)

Love Inge