How to create decal from mesh?

Question

What's the best way to create and apply a new sticker on a part of a mesh.

I want to create the "FORD ESCORT" sticker from scratch (with Gimp, Photoshop, Word or anyting else) because i have no good image of it and than apply it on the top of the windscreen.

Here is my mesh.

I tried @lemon 's second method but I should have missed something because here the result :

Background is black White letters are a little bit transparent

The sticker should be blue with tranparency and letters should be white without transparency.

Answer 1

The answer depends on how is your UV map for the parts below the logo.

If it is regular (rectangular), you may want to use this kind of configuration :

• Your base UV map (the regular UV map of the mesh)
• A mapping which is tuned to position the logo (see location and scale in the image below)
• Your logo texture
• And on the right, a mix shader which combines your mesh material (here a glass) with the logo material, with a factor based on alpha transparency of the logo

In this approach, the logo must be surrounded by alpha transparency. As if not you may obtain this kind of drips :

Another possibility is to setup another UV map :

• This other UV map keeps only the wanted faces stretched around the logo (see 1 below)
• And the other parts of the UV map are scaled down into a alpha part of the logo (they are all in the little black dot in 2)

In this configuration, you can scale or move the UVs to tune the logo size and position (don't forget the set the 'extension' parameter of the texture node from the default value 'repeat' to 'clip' if you want to do that):

Edit/Note : this last configuration also allows to have several logos on one texture. You only have to set the wanted UV map parts in front of each logo.

As shown in both configurations, this can be chained with other layers, like 'dirt' here.

A third possibility is to report the decal on a previous texture :

This can be done using textures as stencil, like in this configuration.

• A : the logo used to define a brush texture
• B : the texture defined as stencil
• C : notice that in this case, the UV map can be defined in any way (here 'smart UV project')

Answer 2

DECALmachine is without doubt the easiest way to achieve this. No UVing is necessary. DM decals are mesh based, alpha mapped decals, that can be projected on curved surfaces. You can use it for simple logos and graphics or for more complex details via normal and parallax mapping. Check it out.

DISCLAIMER: I am the author of DECALmachine.

edit:
Details about usage are covered in the Features playlist, which is best consumed via the documentation, which includes various comments and tips for each tool.

For this qestion, of specific interest should be Decal Project and Rotate Decal.

There are plenty supplied decals, like these as well as tools to instant-create (from geometry) or batch create new decals (from images or bakes).

There is a demo, taking users through an entire asset from start to finish, to see the entire workflow.

I do not intend for this to be an ad, but DM is an excellent, if not the best solution for applying decals, as it was designed for it. And yes, it is a commercial addon, I've got to eat, like everyone else.