What's happening ladies and gentlemen, this is Minh from Architecture Inspirations.
Today I'm going to show you some tips and tricks for using Decals in Twinmotion
to make your renders more interesting and realistic.
Let's get started!
So what are Decals?
Decals are basically 2D objects that you can overlay on top of your models to make the scene more interesting.
In the Twinmotion library, there are several types of Decals that you can use,
such as Decals for Roads, Art Decals, Sign Decals, Object Decals, etc.
Let's add some decals to our scene!
Decals are super useful for creating Roads.
For example, in this area I have a crosswalk so I can use the Zebra Crossing Decal.
I want it to be bigger, so I can increase the size here.
Now to duplicate a decal, I can hold shift, and move it in one direction like so.
Here you can choose whether to create an Instance or a Copy.
The difference between instances and copies
is that when you're adjusting the opacity and offset of one decal,
it will be affected if it's an instance,
while the copy will not be affected.
That looks good!
I will use the asset manager and create a new container,
then move my decals in there.
This will be useful later.
Now I will add a parallel parking spot.
Then rotate it,
and Duplicate it.
Note that you can type in a specific distance here as well.
You can also increase the number of copies here to make an array of the same objects.
You can see that the decals add up quick,
that's why it's a good idea to organize them in the asset manager.
This is very useful because you can move the whole group and create copies easily.
This is great for working with multiple decals.
Now I can rotate and position it to fit the other side.
There we go,
now I can repeat this process to add a line marking on the road.
Then make copies,
put them in a separate container,
and make more copies of that group.
When working with roads,
you can use real world references like I'm doing here.
This way, you can know how to create realistic roads.
When sizing a decal,
you can also stretch it along the width or height
but make sure you don't stretch too much that it looks distorted.
I will also add more markings such as the Left Turn Arrow for the left lane,
and a straight and right turn arrow for the other lane.
I'll add some bicycle lane markings too.
The cool thing is that you can save a group of decals as an asset to your user library.
This way, you can easily use it for other projects later.
You can also create a new folder specifically for Decals like so.
There we go, now just repeat this process anywhere you want to add decals.
This intersection is looking pretty good! Render
There are other objects that you can add such as man hole.
The cool thing is that you can always replace objects without starting from scratch.
Just select the objects you want to replace,
then right click, Replace Object.
Now you can choose an object in the library
and click here to replace.
You can add more realism to your scene by using Imperfection Decals.
For example, I can use the stain decals to add to the road.
They also work on walls too.
It also work on other imported objects such as cars.
Pretty cool huh?
When adding decal to a wall,
pay attention to the corners because it might wrap around like this.
Just adjust the offset value to fix it.
When using decals to add imperfections,
make sure you don't make it look repetitive.
If there are similar decals,
then you can mix them to make the object look more unique.
When working with multiple decals,
make sure you stack them correctly by using the Sort Order.
The Higher the sort order number means that decal will be on top,
the lower the sort order number will place the decal at the bottom.
Experiment with the Sort order and the Opacity to get different effects when stacking decals.
The decals in Twinmotion are really high quality,
if you change lighting of the scene,
you can see that the decal reacts differently depending on the lighting,
giving it a lot of depth, making it more realistic.
When adding puddles, to get a better reflection,
you can add a reflection probe above the puddle,
then increase the size as you need.
As you can see, this makes the reflection a lot more realistic.
You can also play with the opacity to get different looks.
In this case, I will set it as 98% to make it reflective but still keep the details from the ground below.
There are also sign decals that you can use such as No Smoking sign, bathroom sign, No Pets Sign, etc.
There are also object decals, such as door phone panel,
this specific one is more appropriate for apartments but you get the point.
There are also air vents, which are great for interior.
With this decal, you don't need to spend time model the air vents.
And they actually look pretty realistic.
There are leaves decals well, which are useful for the side of the road like this.
Art decals are really good for creating graffiti on walls,
especially textured walls like this brick wall.
But they also work on the ground.
There are special ones that are used specifically for the ground like this one,
which is also used in one of the poses for the animated kids characters.
When adding decals on a curved surface,
you can increase offset to make it look correct.
If you have custom images,
you can load them in the texture slot to create a custom decal.
Just make sure your image is a PNG.
Once you imported it, you can rename it in the Asset Manager and Add it to the User library.
For higher quality decals, you can use Megascans.
If you don't have credits, then click on the free section, and go to decals and try one of these.
To make it work in Twinmotion, we need to turn this into a PNG.
First open the Albedo Map in Photoshop.
Then import the Opacity Map.
Then I will hide the Opacity Map and add Layer Mask for the Albedo Map.
Then go back to the Opacity Map,
and press Ctrl A to Select All,
then Ctrl C to Copy.
Now you can turn off the Opacity Map
and hold down Alt + Left Click the Layer Mask to open it.
Then press Ctrl V to Paste the Opacity map here.
There we go, now we can save this as a PNG.
To load it in, just select a similar decal,
and replace the texture map.
Then we can save it to our user library.
Just repeat this process to create more custom decals.
Note that right now the custom decals are quite limited,
because we can't use the Normal and Roughness maps for it so the decals look flat.
But maybe this is something Twinmotion will improve even more in the future.
Anyway, those were some tips and tricks for using Decals in Twinmotion
to make your renders more interesting and realistic.
If you want to get Twinmotion 2020, then follow this link here.
That’s all for today guys,
leave a like if you enjoyed the video,
comment below and let me know if you have any questions
Stay inspired guys, and I will see you,
next time ;)