The Xdecal Painter plugin revolutionizes environment dressing in Unreal Engine 5 by allowing artists to scatter decals like foliage. It features powerful brush controls, precision path tools, sophisticated randomization, and crucial overlap prevention for polished, realistic scenes.
Alexandros Demetriades, a skilled environment and tech artist, developed Xdecal Painter to address the tedious nature of placing decals manually in Unreal Engine 5. His powerful editor-only tool transforms the process into a swift, intuitive creative exercise, offering speed and flexibility comparable to the engine’s built-in foliage painting system. This tool is designed to save countless hours for level designers and environment artists aiming for high levels of photorealism.
The plugin integrates directly into the UE5 editor, appearing under the Modes dropdown as “XD Decal Paint” once enabled. This immediate access highlights the creator’s focus on seamless workflow integration.
Core Decal Painting and Randomization
The primary function of Xdecal Painter is its brush-based painting, allowing users to rapidly cover surfaces with detail. Brush settings are highly customizable, featuring adjustable radius, density, and scatter count.
Achieving Natural Variation
A major challenge with manual decal placement is achieving natural randomness without repetition. This tool tackles this head-on:
- Adaptive Spacing: Automatically adjusts decal placement based on size, ensuring organic distribution.
- Rotation Randomization: Decals can be randomized across a 0-360 degree range, or set to binary rotation for structured, repetitive patterns (like floor tiles).
- Weighted Materials: Users can assign multiple decal materials and adjust their selection weight, influencing the probability of which decal appears, leading to non-uniform, interesting wear and tear patterns.
Precision Placement with Filters and Paths
While speed is critical, control is essential for professional Level Design. Xdecal Painter offers robust features for fine-tuning placement and optimizing performance.
Advanced Filtering Options
The asset includes powerful filters that dictate exactly where decals can land. The creator designed these controls to mimic real-world placement characteristics:
- Height and Slope: Limits placement based on minimum/maximum world height and surface angle, preventing decals from floating or appearing on vertical walls incorrectly (e.g., restricting moss to flat ground).
- Edge Filter: Specifically targets the edges of geometry, which is often crucial for dirt buildup or subtle water damage effects.
Path Layouts for Structured Detail
For laying out details along roads, pathways, or precise architectural lines, the Path Layout mode provides revolutionary control. Users define a path by clicking points, and the plugin automatically populates it.
Features of the path mode include:
- Snapping: Angle Snap (defaulting to 5° when holding Alt) and Vertex Snapping (V key) ensure paths are clean and align perfectly with existing geometry.
- Multi-Lane Stamping: A unique feature allowing users to lay down multiple parallel paths simultaneously, quickly covering wide lanes with randomized decals while maintaining spacing discipline.
- Organization: The plugin automatically groups painted decals under a parent actor, maintaining a tidy Outliner—a massive benefit for large ArchViz and Game Design projects.
Organization, Performance, and Pairing
To ensure optimized performance, Xdecal Painter includes features like Prevent Overlap and scene limits, which use padding scales to avoid rendering decals on top of each other. Furthermore, the inclusion of Tag Groups simplifies material management, allowing artists to quickly filter and organize decal slots (e.g., “Ground,” “Metal,” “Roads”).
A crucial recommendation from Alexandros is to pair the painter with his Xdecal Tri-Projection Material. While Xdecal Painter works with any standard decal material, the complementary triplanar material solves common streaking and stretching issues across complex surfaces, ensuring perfect edge projection and maximizing the visual quality of your Photorealism goals. You can find the companion material here: Xdecal Tri-Projection Material.
Availability
The Xdecal Painter plugin is available for purchase on the Fab marketplace, supporting Unreal Engine 5.6+. While it is an Editor-only plugin, it does not require activation for packaged games.
Find the Xdecal Painter plugin and documentation here: Xdecal Painter on Fab.
Conclusion
The Xdecal Painter is an essential tool that transforms a labor-intensive chore into an intuitive creative step. By leveraging features like foliage-style painting, path tools, and robust randomization, Alexandros Demetriades has provided Unreal Engine users with a definitive solution for adding realistic, complex surface details efficiently.
If you are invested in improving your scene quality and maximizing speed, exploring this tool is highly recommended. To continue learning about powerful tools and techniques for crafting immersive environments, be sure to check out our other resources on Unreal Engine Environment & World Building and our guides dedicated to Unreal Engine Lighting & Rendering. You can also browse our general articles on Unreal Engine to find the latest updates and showcases.
Sources:
Unreal Engine 5 Decal Tool – Xdecal Painter Explained
Paint decals like foliage, with spray bursts or paths for total control! | Fab
