Baking Decals

After you applied and adjusted the decal parameters, if you want, you can bake them to a single texture.

1. Select the object that has the decals applied
2. Go to the shading tab and open the Sanctus Tab in the N panel

3. Switch from Material to Decal baking

Important: for Decal Baking uncheck Auto Margin, and set the margin to 1px

4. Select the maps that you need to bake (in my case there is no emission so I will bake all the rest), adjust resolution, and samples for each map, then click bake, it will take some time depending on the amount of decals, the system you have and the preferences for resolution and samples used, in my case it took 50 seconds:

5. Once the bake is done you will see the bake result, you can inspect the maps by clicking in the thumbnail.

6. Now you have 2 options, merge it with a procedural material or a baked material. In any case we will use a custom nodegroup from the shader tools in the N panel:

7. Add this nodegroup to the shader editor with the “Add Group Node” button and also add the baked decal batch:

For all cases the mix will be done by the ALPHA channel of the Decal Albedo bake
Now the decal collection is hidden in the viewport and we can see the baked decals combined with the procedural material

8a. if you are using a procedural material:

8b. if you are using a baked material:

The “Detail Str” parameter of the Decal Bake Combine node controls how much of the material normal, affects the decal normal (like in real life, if there’s a bumpy surface the decal will get some of it)

8c. if the procedural material has no bake outputs or is not bakeable:

9 You can also bake the custom node “decal bake combine” output sockets as you would do with any other sanctus library procedural material to get the final combined texture maps of the material with the decals: