Working with decals

[PanchoBallard]

Is there any way of grouping decals, like you might do with layers in Photoshop? It would be really handy to be able to group or merge several decals then work with them all as one item.

 

[Nuschel01]

No, there isn‘t

 

[PanchoBallard]

No, there isn‘t

Is the headbanging because people ask this all the time or frustration at the option not being in the game? I expect people do ask it a lot, I just couldn't find them!

 

[Nuschel01]

frustration at the option not being in the game

This

 

[PanchoBallard]

Indeed! It seems like such an obvious thing to have. Every time there's an update I check and every time I'm disappointed. I wonder if it's much more complicated to implement than I imagine?

 

[LaSupra]

I wonder if it's much more complicated to implement than I imagine?

If it is, then I imagine it would be down to the "Align to Surface/Align to Camera" options.

Any group that you would create may look fine in one particular area, where the alignment is correct, but may look off if you move them somewhere else. This is because each decal takes it's alignment from the specific point where it's placed (I believe it would be called Tangent-based Projection). It might be alright for a flat surface area but could look misplaced or broken elsewhere. If it was a fixed projection system like in Forza, then I could see PD implementing grouping too, but the freedom of decal movement and placement in GTS is far too great to lose IMO.

As for merging and/or possible saving, I'd assume GTS' livery editor only has the capacity to read SVGs, not combine and write them into a new file. Even then, PD would most likely want to implement sharing functions for the merged decals: 1) Can't see many merged decals keeping under the 15kb limit, 2) there is a risk of possibly stealing other people's decals through this method and claiming them as the merger's own, unless PD implements a credit/attribution system into their livery/merged decal displays, or just disables the share option if other people's decals are used. We could save them on our system storage, but again the file sizes aren't really accounted for.

+1 on the frustration though. We can only imagine the ease of use the livery editor would have if we could move big chunks of decals around

 

[PanchoBallard]

Kudos for this excellent reply, LaSupra!

 

[MatskiMonk]

If it is, then I imagine it would be down to the "Align to Surface/Align to Camera" options.

Any group that you would create may look fine in one particular area, where the alignment is correct, but may look off if you move them somewhere else. This is because each decal takes it's alignment from the specific point where it's placed (I believe it would be called Tangent-based Projection). It might be alright for a flat surface area but could look misplaced or broken elsewhere. If it was a fixed projection system like in Forza, then I could see PD implementing grouping too, but the freedom of decal movement and placement in GTS is far too great to lose IMO.

As for merging and/or possible saving, I'd assume GTS' livery editor only has the capacity to read SVGs, not combine and write them into a new file. Even then, PD would most likely want to implement sharing functions for the merged decals: 1) Can't see many merged decals keeping under the 15kb limit, 2) there is a risk of possibly stealing other people's decals through this method and claiming them as the merger's own, unless PD implements a credit/attribution system into their livery/merged decal displays, or just disables the share option if other people's decals are used. We could save them on our system storage, but again the file sizes aren't really accounted for.

+1 on the frustration though. We can only imagine the ease of use the livery editor would have if we could move big chunks of decals around

I'd figured it might be something to do with the maths behind the projection method. IIRC, a decal placed in one area, duplicated and moved to another area will project slightly differently to one placed in that other area from new (noticeable when creating a repeating pattern all over the car (like the Frank Stella Graph Paper Artcar)) so there's obviously an element to the decal projection that comes back from the wireframe. If you think of grouped decals as having a new bounding area with this feedback from the wireframe acting on a new single point, you can see how it might cause anomalies... but, I'd suggest that PD could implement a group function that just applied the same translation/transformation to each item within a group instead. It'd probably still create some issues (like if part of the group moved from a door panel to a roof panel for instance), but it might still be better to ungroup and fix the odd issue, rather than shift or resize a bunch of decals manually... I think 34 decals to make one image is the most I've used, that would definately have been easier with a group function!

As for your other points. It wouldn't be impossible for the servers to manipulate the XML in the SVG files. Creating a group, letting GTS parse and create new XML, then applying that to the car in one could conceivably work. But I think a more pragmatic way of looking at it, would be to refer to 1 lot of 15kB as a block, and only allow people to upload 1000 blocks and use 300 blocks etc. etc. That way, if you need to upload a 45kB file, you could, but it'd use 3 blocks.

As for sharing, it's possible to rip-off peoples SVG's at the moment, and PD don't seem to have fixed that.

 

[LaSupra]

As for your other points. It wouldn't be impossible for the servers to manipulate the XML in the SVG files. Creating a group, letting GTS parse and create new XML, then applying that to the car in one could conceivably work. But I think a more pragmatic way of looking at it, would be to refer to 1 lot of 15kB as a block, and only allow people to upload 1000 blocks and use 300 blocks etc. etc. That way, if you need to upload a 45kB file, you could, but it'd use 3 blocks.

I could see that working, similar to how Forza has done its "Vinyl Group" creator. To be able to save, create & edit groups inside a temporary SVG container of sorts inside GTS, so that all the grouped decals are treated under one projection point instead of separately. "Ungrouping" the group would spawn the individual decals, possibly resulting in slightly messed up projections; but as you said, it would only be the odd issue that could be fixed with a few adjustments. I could also see the addition of perspective tools to GTS if this system does happen, in preserving the results of the different projections inside a merged, editable SVG group.

Those blocks giving me flashbacks to the GT1/2 memory card replay days Not sure about it being 'blocks' specifically, as we can easily get SVGs that don't fall into an even 15kb division & it might end up wasting some space, but definitely a memory quota of sorts and definitely with similar numbers to ones you've given, summing up to around 15MB total per person.