How to Use Decals in Unity
Objective: To understand what a Decal is in Unity and how to use it.
What is a Decal?
A decal is a projection of a Material onto a game object in a scene which also has the ability to wrap itself around said objects such as a circle or box.
Above I have projected an image onto a box and you can see how it wraps around the object.
How to Get A Decal Setup In Your Scene
Firstly we need to make sure that our project has the High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP) installed, if you are unsure how to get this setup, head over to this article to help you out:
https://christopherhilton88.medium.com/high-definition-rendering-pipeline-in-unity-3bee774bd6c
Next step is too add a ‘Decal Projector’ game object in the Hierarchy, right click in Hierarchy → Rendering → Decal Projector.
Next let’s create a new HDRP Decal Material, right click in Project window → Create → Material, name the material. From here we need to update the Shader of the material to be HDRP/Decal.
Now it is time to assign a texture that is going to be projected into the Base Map field. This Base Map field is the one that identifies a texture for the decal.
We also need to make sure that we have the ‘Affect BaseColor’ field box ticked under ‘Surface Options’ as this is going to enable the decal to show on all of the objects materials.
I have had to adjust a few of the settings (smoothness, global opacity and metallic etc to get my desired image).
Almost there! Now we need to assign the new material decal we have created to the ‘Decal Projector’ material field:
Lastly, just play around with the movement, rotation and scale tools to adjust the Decal Projector game object into the desired position.
