Iray Decals vs L.I.E. - Comparison?

Ostadan

Decals and L.I.E. overlays seem to accomplish much the same thing.  So, if someone wants to put a picture on, say, a figure's T-shirt, what are the pros and cons of each approach?

mjc1016

Obviously, the Iray decals only work in Iray...

Tobor

Decals are hard to visualize, and LIE takes extra time to rebuild the layers each time you use the file. I find LIE extraordinarily slow for what it does.

To be honest, I'd just do it in Photoshop. Takes 30 seconds to make an overlay, and creates a permanent texture you can easily reuse.

For background on decals, the concept was designed for things like internationalizing product labels in composited shots, or changing the signage in architectural renderings. Given the proper scene tools, it's possible to insert the reference of the decal image into the scene database, then render outside of any 3D modeling tool. 

Oso3D

Decals have projection types, which makes them very different animals, in my book. Among other things, you can give a complex object with multiple surfaces one even texture, and just ignore uv mapping. LIE doesn't do anything remotely like that.