OTOY Forums

So this is something I'm still not very clear on the proper technique in Octane for C4D:

I have an object that I have textured with a complicated mix texture with dirt. I have it just the way I want it. Its on my object, everything is great. Now, I need to add a little detail, like a decal or something like that. What is the proper way to do this? What I've been trying is selecting a face, setting the selection, then creating a material with the decal and setting an alpha, then applying this to my selection, but now anywhere that was transparent in the decal material is now transparent and I can see through to the inside of my geometry. I was expecting to see the base material below it, but this is not the case. So, what am I doing wrong here?

You should create an additionnal mixMaterial with your previous mixMaterial in one slot and your decal material in the second slot. In the amount of this mixMaterial, you add the alpha created for your decal material. That's it.

Ah ok, so its really just a "Mix within a mix within a mix" kind of thing. Thats a really cumbersome way to add little things like this. I hope there's an improved way to add simple things like this in future versions. Thanks for the clarification atome.

I agree, the C4D's stacking materials is very usefull for this kind of details. Unfortunately, Octane doesn't work like this.
Of course, if your decal uses the same paramaters like Specular, Roughness, Bump... than one of the materials inside your mixes, you may replace the additional mixMaterial by a mixTexture in the diffuse of this material. Or, if you like to create complex setups, you may use mutiple mixTextures in Diffuse, Specular, Bump,... nodes to control the differences between base material and decal, with shared Projection and UV transform nodes to control the projection of the decal. Octane is nodal, there is not only one solution...

i don't know any else software works with stacking over objects, do you know?
Theoretically may be possible implement this feature in plugin. But it's very complicated and time consuming process. I don't prefer to do in current phase of plugin.

This is one of the biggest things I miss from using C4D materials. We do labels and stickers constantly