Decal Road Editor

Basics

The Decal Road Editor allows to create and edit Decal Road.

A Decal Road (also previously known as decalsroad) is a strip-shaped decal defined by a 2D spline. This strip is projected onto the terrain, similarly to how decals are projected on collision meshes. These are used widely in BeamNG.drive to visually represent roads, off-road paths, etc. and therefore do not provide any sort of collision geometry (like decals).

The Inspector window is required to adjust various properties of a decal road.

Adding and Editing Decal Roads

When selecting this edit mode, two options will appear below the main toolbar:

  • Default Width: The width of the decal road
  • Only AI Roads: If enabled, only decal roads used for AI route mapping (with drivability value set) can be selected

These values will be the initial values for any new decal road that will be created.

Toolbar options Toolbar options

Creating a Decal Road

Add a new decal road with these steps:

  1. Press ALT and then hover the cursor on the viewport to display a preview of the first node.
  2. While holding ALT click the Left Mouse Button to create the node.
  3. Repeat step #2 until to create the other nodes.
  4. When done, release ALT to finalize the decalroad.
  • New decal roads may appear invisible until a Material is assigned to it through the Inspector

Editing a Decal Road

To edit an existing decal road:

  1. Select the decal road by clicking on it. Selected decal road will display a white outline/wireframe and its nodes will be shown as red spheres.
  2. Click on a sphere to select a node, then use the gizmo to translate or scale the node as needed. Press Delete to remove the node.
  3. Hold ALT to create new nodes. Use this to either add new nodes inbetween existing ones, or to extend the decal road.

  • Decal roads will be extended from their last node. To extend a decal road from the first node, make sure to select that node first.
  • Press Delete when the entire decal road is selected to remove it entirely.
  • It is possible to copy & paste properties from one decal road to another by simply selecting each and respectively pressing CTRL+C and CTRL+V

Inspector Window

When a Decal Road is selected, several of its options are displayed in the Inspector window

Inspector when a decal road is selected Inspector when a decal road is selected

The Pathfinding panel contains settings related to AI route mapping:

Property
Description
Property
drivability
Description
Whether the AI should drive on this road or not. Goes from 0 to 1, with higher values indicating a better road where the AI can drive faster. Set to -1 to exclude the road from the AI map
Property
lanesLeft
Description
Amount of lanes the road has on the left side
Property
lanesRight
Description
Amount of lanes the road has on the right side
Property
oneWay
Description
Toggle one way road
Property
flipDirection
Description
Invert the direction of the road, for oneWay
Property
gatedRoad
Description
If enabled, traffic won’t spawn on this road, but AI can still drive on it
Property
useSubdivisions
Description
If enabled, the generated AI route will use more points for a smoother route

Other relevant properties are:

Property
Description
Property
Position
Description
Coordinates of the selected node
Property
Width
Description
Width of the selected node
Property
Split Road
Description
Split the decal road into two separate decal roads, with the selected node defining the split point
Property
improvedSpline
Description
If enabled, the newer spline algorithm is used to generate a smoother path. Its use is recommended
Property
startTangent
Description
If enabled, the first node is used as a tangent point for the curve
Property
endTangent
Description
If enabled, the last node is used as a tangent point for the curve
Property
looped
Description
If enabled, the path will loop drawing the path between the last and first node
Property
smoothness
Description
Smoothness factor of the curve. 0.5 is recommended
Property
Detail
Description
How many segments the decal road has. Lower values will create a mpre segments, but reduce the maximum length of the renderable decal road
Property
overObject
Description
If enabled, the decal road will be project over objects too. If disabled, it will be projected only on the terrain
Property
Material
Description
Material to use for the decal road
Property
textureLength
Description
Scale of the texture along the path length
Property
breakAngle
Description
Lower values will create a smoother decal road, at cost of complexity
Property
renderPriority
Description
Higher priority decals road will render on top of lower priority ones. Lower values means higher priority
Property
zBias
Description
Used for the rendering order
Property
decalBias
Description
Hovering height of the decal over the terrain. Higher values can reduce clipping issues if using large scale environments
Property
distanceFade
Description

Distance/Range from the camera at which the decal road will fade out.

e.g. 100-50 means the decal road will start to fade when the camera is 100m away from it, with a 50m range for the fading effect

Property
startEndFade
Description
Fading to apply at the start and end of the decal road
Property
debugRoadLength
Description
Displays the length of the current decal road in meters. This is only for display, and not editable
Last modified: December 7, 2021

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