Struggling with decals

[Dornil]

Hi!

Yesterday I've been trying to install Pfalz D.III from Capun's site into FE2, and just couldn't get the decals to show. I spent a lot of time naming, renaming and tossing around the folders, but to no avail. As I understand, it should be: Decals=>Pfalzd3a=>D=>Jasta7 (e.g.); it didn't work. Decals=>Pfalzd3a=>Jasta7=>D didn't work either. Changing DecalsMaxLOD=3 to MaxLod=3 in Decals.ini also did not help.

Really need an advice here.

[DARoot]

The file "decals.ini" in your /Objects/Aircraft/Pfalzd3a/Jasta16b folder tells the game engine where to find decals.
Here's an example of one of the entries:

[Decal001]
MeshName=WingO_L
DecalLevel=0
DecalFacing=BOTTOM
FilenameFormat=PfalzD3a/Jasta16b/D/BWingL
Position=-2.4620,-0.2600
Scale=4.1
DecalMaxLOD=3

The 4th line (FilenameFormat) identifies the particular decal (BWingL) and the path to it.
So, your folder structure has to match.

For some reason, I have the decals for most of my add-on aircraft in two places - one /D folder in the main texture folder of the aircraft folder, and another instance in a separate /Decals folder (in the \Objects folder), that only contains
folders with the aircraft name, squadron/texture, and the /D folder (full of the decals). In other words, matching the pathway in "decals.ini"
I believe this is a change from FE1 to FE2, and that I'm only keeping the copies of the decals in the main aircraft folder for "backup storage."
I'm sure you only need to use the separate /Decals folder, since I have several aircraft (including the Pfalzd3a JG2 skin) that call decals from a different skin (J15Star).
[Incidentally, all these folders are in C:/Users/Owner/Thirdwire/FirstEagles2, NOT in the main FE2 installation folder).

There's a whole "Decalling Tutorial" stickied here, if you're interested in finding out more.
Hope some of this is helpful.

DARoot

[Wrench]

One of the major differences of the "2" series (FE and SF) is the fact that decals have to be in the /Objects/Decals/*name of plane* folder. From there, for the most part, the pathways should be the same (not always the case, but ya know...)

Also, depending on the age of the mod (many predate 2008) the DecalMaxLod= line is missing. That just tells the game engine how many lower level LODs to use the decals on.

So, normally, the pathway in the decals ini would be

*name of plane*/-name of skin-/D (sub folder)/=name of decal=

This little tutorial in the SF2 Knowledge Base might be of some help; I hope it is!

 

 

[Dornil]

Thank you for the help! I was missing "PfalzD3a" in decal path.