• Lily Huang

  over 3 years ago

  First of all I want to say that I love this add-on and I love the author's other two add-ons Meshmachine and Mesh3tools, each of them is powerful. About Decal I watched the tutorials and videos for days to learn. So the question is, why I only gave 4 stars. Yes, it is because of the video. I don't know why the author was in such a hurry to make the videos, it was really rushed and every click was as fast as lightning. For people who are familiar with this add-on is not a problem, but for newone to this add-on, my goodness, I just want to see these features what you just said you actually clicked what button and clicked where and then came out of those magic results, and then less than half a second, a flash, everything's done. So, in fact the author provide a lot detailed tutorial videos, I may be quickly familiar with the add-ons, However, I ended up spending a lot of time getting familiar with that videos because I had to keep pressing the pause button or replaying it over and over again just to see what was actually clicked on those 3 frames. This really makes people uncomfortable, why can't you just pause for two seconds to show the operation clearly ....

  The other two add-ons have the same problem, super fast, like Quicksilver

  Another problem, DM is better for basic colors and textures. If you want to use it on those PBR materials, like rusty iron or rocks or something, then even after some adjustments, decals' material and main body are always unable to be the same. So if you really need to use it in this case, you may need to use PS to deal with it.

  Well, at the beginnin I thought Decalmachine was just a tool to quickly paste a PNG or something, but then I realized that it was much more powerful than just pasting a picture. In fact for a quick presentation this thing can save a lot of time. And it's fun to play.

• 

  MACHIN3

  over 3 years ago

  Which video? The trailer? Obviously that's fast, it crams dozens of features in 1-2 minutes..
  Beyond that, I have over 50 feature videos in the docs, complemented by additional textual information, tips and advice. Nothing about it was rushed. This took a tremendous effort.
  Although unfortunately, I did accidentally record the pre-2.0 videos using a lower framerate.

  As for decals on textured materials, the documentation makes this VERY clear. In fact on the first page of the docs, this is mentioned near very the top:

  ---
  Keep in mind

  The focus of DECALmachine is speed and flexibility in terms of Design and Detailing. Depending on how far you intend to take your designs, and especially if you, intend to use complex shader node setups or do complex texturing such as weathering, floating mesh decals might not be the best workflow, unless you are targeting a deferred rendering solution with mesh decal support, which allows for selective channel blending, instead of just alpha blending as in Blender's Eeevee and Cycles.
  ---

  I'm a bit tired of seeing this as a complaint tbh, people expect DM to do something that it never advertised and that's not practical to do in forward rendering, often due to a fundamental misunderstanding of concepts in 3D.

  Glad to see you enjoy DM nonetheless.
  
• crankenstein

  over 3 years ago

  Very good addon, was a nice introduction to parallax mapping in blender too.

• 

  MACHIN3

  over 3 years ago

  Thanks man!
• Timur

  over 3 years ago

  Genius-level addon. Once you start using it, it's very hard to stop :D I love that you can make your own decals too, so you don't have to only use other people's ones.

• 

  MACHIN3

  over 3 years ago

  Obrigado!
• Jablaya

  over 3 years ago

  Absolutely FANTASTIC addon! It does not only saves a TON of time, it opens a whole new world in the "detailing models" field! The custom decals creation is a pleasure to use! truly a godsend! Thank you MACHIN3 !

• 

  MACHIN3

  over 3 years ago

  Glad to hear that, thanks and enjoy!
• Justin Thomas

  over 3 years ago

  I wasted $50 thinking this would be a cool additional tool for adding details before taking them into Substance Painter... if you use Substance Painter, this add on is absolutely pointless.. If I thought recording a video throwing it in the recycling bin and emptying it would get me a refund I'd do it but thats highly doubtful... just chopping it up to a lost $50 on something I'll literally never use...

• 

  MACHIN3

  over 3 years ago

  These are the first lines of the the product description of DECALmachine:

  "DECALmachine is a blender addon, which through mesh Decals, allows for surface detailing in a very non-committal, non-destructive, UV-less way. As such it represents an alternative approach to hard surface texturing."

  It's like you expect the screwdriver to be a hammer, and then rate it 1/5 when you fail to get the nail into the wall with it. I rate your rating 1/5.
• TJ

  over 3 years ago

  I've had quite a few issues getting the geometry the decals produce to actually apply properly, especially around cylindrical shapes. It's a shame that you have to combine textures outside of Blender if you want to do anything else with the normals etc, but it's not the end of the world.

• 

  MACHIN3

  over 3 years ago

  If you are talking about the baking export workflow, there are numerous places in the docs, where I point out that baking is not an ideal workflow in context of decals. Beyond that, I'm also limited by what Blender can do here, and there's an ongoing Blender bug since 2019, that prevents me from pushing it further.
  
  People who insist on cramming Decals into their texture painting workflow, instead of leveraging the actual potential of Decals via Atlasing or Trim Sheets, have no place to complain IMO. I warn about it everywhere.
• Niall McCaffrey

  almost 4 years ago

  Works ok if you just want to stick decals on blank materials and render the results in Blender, but if you try to bake things, use textures, or do anything else it doesn't work. Fully agree with Sashas review. I will add that the author is rude, arrogant and unhelpful when you look for support, so I am only giving this a 2 star review. At this high price, I would expect a very professional level of support, with someone polite and helpful, not a condescending ass who says everything is my problem. Perhaps that is why the author keeps saying to email them with support, so it's not obvious in public how bad it is. Product works for rendering in blender as stated, but forget about baking, forget about the material matching, it doesn't work, and you'll be treated rather rudely when you ask for help.

• 

  MACHIN3

  almost 4 years ago

  This users has written 26 emails in the span of 3 weeks. All of these were not about DECALmachine issues or problems. But general game art workflow. Ok, I tried to be as helpful as I could.
  For instance, his first few emails were about the deferred decal workflow in Unity. I outlined how this works, how you don't need to match materials, as various surface material parameters like color, metallic etc are simply "taken" from the partent object, and not defined in the decal shader.
  All good, part of the job I guess.
  His latest issue was about him attempting to bake trim sheets, instead of exporting them directly. He's trying to bake them with an addon, that I have not created, and that it fails. I pointed out that you absolutely can bake trim sheet materials in Blender manually, so it is an issue with his chosen baking addon, not a DECALmachine issue. This went back and forth a bit with him insisting it's a DECALmachine issue and me insisting it's not, as you can bake them manually just fine in Blender.
  He accused me of being an asshole and trying to push him off to someone else, he then threatened to leave a bad review and here we are now.
• Andreas Queitsch

  almost 4 years ago

  I am still pretty new in the usage with Blender, but this addon is very easy and fun to use and can improve your work a lot, both in time spend and overall design.

• 

  MACHIN3

  almost 4 years ago

  Thanks man!
• Sergiy

  almost 4 years ago

  One of the most used addon.
  quality: 5
  support: 5
  documentation: 4(in general good, but not perfect, but it is more than enough for 50$ product)
  Overall - 5 starts!

• 

  MACHIN3

  almost 4 years ago

  What's lacking in regards to the docs?
• Sascha

  almost 4 years ago

  3 Stars and the following may sound a bit negative. So before you read I will let you know that I'm a fan of this addon and I'm happy to have it. Nor I wanna bother the dev or anyone else. But at this time/version it's not for me in manner of creating game assets for Unity URP. I write this for (poor) people/students/hoppyists which are in the same boat and struggeling around to buy or not especially while it's one of the more expensive ones.

  1. Material Match:
  Well it's not working rly flawless. So if you put a decal especially on a procedural texture it will match the underlieng color but not the texture itself. After a while I figured out theres an addon can handle this called "INSTAMAT". But I dont wanna buy another add to fix a lack of the addon itself where I expected it from. The workaround is to fiddle around within the texture editor with the decal material and the underlying material. Thats to inconvenient for me.

  2. I couldn't figure out an easy way to bake down the decals with underlying procedural/other textures. It would be greate to have "1-click"/easy workflow to bake down your high poly with plastered decals to the low ploy cage. The best solution I could find is an 3 year old tutorial video which is declined as "outdated". So the workaround is to create your decal trims sheets/atlasses and bake a combination with the base model maps. So you have to do it for all maps you wanna use. This is quite time intense and error-prone. This belongs in most to the (old) regualr baking steps to use with Unity URP. Anywhere I saw that there is a solution for HDRP and Unreal Engine but I can't tell anything about it now.

  Maybe I'm wrong and I oversaw something or I'm just to stupid but I invested a lot time to watch the vids. But even then theres no easy straight forward tutorial to come across to my points above. If theres someone who can teach me how todo it fast, easy and right, let me know. I will instantly ensure to refine this rating.

  So why do I buy addons... in first they should be time saver for me. If I have to struggle around with em. It makes not that much sense for me except they are time saver later ;). Second I can do things with em I can not without or only with big circumstances

  5 Stars from me as from all others!
  So, what is it good for and do I regret the bought?
  It's a big time saver if you go for conceptiual design or prototyping or to figure things out and inspire yourself.
  Its even good for visualisations and fast renders. As far as is for narmal map based viz. (beware of the cons of normal, diffuse, paralx, etc. -maps, cause decals are in general exactly that)
  The included decals are a bit to few. So I can recommend to buy additional packs or build your own to play out it's real potential.
  So if you are just interessted in these points go for it.
  Over all I do not use it that much cause I wanted to create fast game assets with it. But all in all I like it so much to just plaster your cube with decals. And yeah it looks rly greate. And as I said it can give you a new view of things you normally do. For this I do not regret the bought on a Black Friday for 38 bucks but 50? Hmm atm. I guess for me not compared to other plugs/tools. I mean blender itself cost nothin which is so greate and give you so much. And there are also a lot other ways to craete decals or Kitbashing things. Therefor I think before going for addons blender itself is worth a good donation (Even if they get pushed now by the big players. Hopefolly they can not break their mental).

  I'm a bit sad about that I mailed this to MACHIN3 for about 4 weeks and didn't got a response until now. But it's ok for me... better he will invest his time on the next release and I may get something I was expecting for. ;)

  No harm ment :)

• 

  MACHIN3

  almost 4 years ago

  1. I have never received an email from you.
  2. If you are using Unity URP, Decals are not for you, because you are missing out on the material blending capabilities provided by deferred rendering. The docs are very clear on that and it is recommended to use trim sheets in that case, see https://machin3.io/DECALmachine/docs/export_atlas/#urp

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