Question about Decal.ini

[+Viper63a]

I know enough to get by, but digging deeper for better understanding...

Can someone point to or let me know exactly what these fields do in the decal.ini file? I think I sorta figure them out by trial and error...but looking for some clearer info...

DecalLevel=
DecalMaxLOD=

Many Thanks!

=V=

[+Viper63a]

Found it! Thanks DaddyAirplanes...

 

Decal001]
MeshName=Fuselage                                  ---------------- actual node it goes on. limit 3 tga per (your viewer make this sooooo much easier for the likes of me to find this out)
DecalLevel=2                                    ---------------------------- 4 different levels. O ties to nation, 1 ties to unit, 2 is serialized and unique to each aircraft, 4 is kills iirc. 2 is normally used for serial numbers but can be used for individual schemes/camoflage or nose arts
DecalFacing=RIGHT                                    ----------------- self explanitory. all basic directions included TOP, FRONT, LEFT etc
FilenameFormat=B-52G_89/DiegoGarcia/D/FuseR  naming convention. game starts looking where guruu pointed out and does not need included in this line. the D folder in this is not really needed, but a habit amongst the senior modders that i picked up
Position=-2.75,0.0
Rotation=0.0
Scale=48.00                 ----------------------------------------------- not usually this big. can be either side of the decimal point, mine are often huge due to a tga covering the whole fuselage side or wing. but one could make a bigger tga with high detail and scale below 1.0 to place on model
DecalMaxLOD=3                                       --------------------- Wrench can explain better than me, but iirc has to do with distance visible

biggest issue often encountered is typo's in the fileformat and position being off model. DecalMaxLOD can cause some issues too, again not THE expert on that. I usually default to =3 on most of my work.

the ini can be huge. the displayed project is already at 130+ entries and I am going to add two more showing the EVS in better detail

personally i prefer tga for many markings to on skin. it seems to show detail better in some instances than skins (esp when the original skin is smaller; 512 rather than 2048 or 4096)

one other trick that can be done with 2 level decals is to have a base decal and then one or two specials. example thisDecal as a base then thisDecal000 as a CAG bird. the other however many will just use that default.  HOWEVER, i found with the tankers i did that more than two individuals caused issues. i wound up having to create a tga for every single one and even then there were oddities past 10 aircraft loaded.

hope this is useful information. just some observations from a guy that plays quite a bit with the tga file.

[Gatling20]

From TK's decal tutorial:

DecalLevel=

Decals can made to use different textures based on one of the four dynamic variables: aircraft’s Nation ID, Squadron ID, Aircraft Number, and Kill Number.  You select which variable the decal should use by setting the DecalLevel, as follow:

  DecalLevel=0    –> Nation ID
  DecalLevel=1    –> Squadron ID
  DecalLevel=2    –> Aircraft Number
  DecalLevel=3    –> Kill Number

DecalMaxLOD=

This controls how far out the decal show up on the mesh. In the aircraft's INI file you will see (usually) 5  levels of detail, like this:

[LOD001]
Distance=100

[LOD002]
Distance=250

[LOD003]
Distance=1000

[LOD004]
Distance=2000

[LOD005]
Distance=13000

 

So if you put DecalMaxLOD=2 in the Decals.INI, that decal will  only show out to 250m. Useful for limiting  the distance at which the sim tries to render small decals (serial numbers etc), which helps with frame rates.

 

 

[Wrench]

And said 3rd Wire decal tutorial is in the downloads section, iirc, under Utilities. Essential Reading (tm)

[+Viper63a]

Some truly amazing people on this site!!

Thanks!