The more I learn about PhotoWorks, the more I like it, even when some of the options can be quite tricky or require extra effort, like when setting up lights, for instance. It can be hard to figure out exactly where to put them, how many and how bright, but it’s a real advantage to be able to set those lights in the first place.  I must say of all the different options there are, I really like the ability to place decals on your rendering, especially the ones that map to the geometry like a label. It’s almost like placing a sticker on it! And with the use of software like PhotoShop or even Paint, to create masks, almost anything can be a decal!

This is one that I made using another rendering.  It’s a simple jpg file.

I applied the image as a decal to the face of this mug, by pre-selecting the face and clicking on the New Decal icon in the PhotoWorks toolbar.

This will open a Decals property manager on the left, and a collection of available decals on the right. You don’t have to limit yourself to these few decals; simply click on Browse and search for the image you want to use as a decal. In my case, I’m using legocolor copy.jpg as my decal.

Notice how it first appears distorted. That’s because it’s being mapped cylindrically to the face of the mug.

What I really want is for the decal to be placed on the face of the mug like a sticker, so I have to go to the Mapping tab in the property manager and select Label under Mapping. It looks a bit better, but I’m still not done. By dragging the edges of that blue and pink rectangle that appears on the graphics area, I can adjust the size of the label. I can also do this directly from the property manager, by entering numeric values for height and width under Size/Orientation. I can also adjust the location of the image on the face by dragging those green and red arrows on the graphics area or by entering numeric values next to the red and green arrows in the property manager.

Once I’m satisfied with the size and location of my decal, there’s one more thing for me left to do:  get rid of that white area in the label. Now, this is a step that you may or may not want to do. You may decide that what you want is a decal that includes the white area, like many stickers do, but in my case, I really want to get rid of it, so I’m going to use the following image as a mask for this purpose.

So I go back to the Image tab in the property manager, select Image Mask File under Mask Image, and just as I did before, browse for the image to use as a mask. Notice the red lines on parts of the decal preview in the property manager. They indicate that some areas in the image will not appear in the rendering. These areas correspond to those in black in the mask. Think of the mask as a stencil. It is created from the same image you are using as a decal, but in black and white. The white area gets to appear in the label, the black area appears as transparent. The greatest thing is that you don’t need to resize or move or adjust the image you are using a mask, like you did for the one you’re using as a decal. Notice the result on the graphics area.

And this is what it looks like once rendered.

By the way, you would never guess what I used to create the image I used as a mask in this case! Well, I used PhotoView 360. I rendered the image using All White studio shadow as the environment (it also works with others such as Black Studio shadow and HDR studio shadow) and saved the final color output to use as my decal and the Alpha Output to use as my mask.