Libgdx rendering floor for 3D game

Question

In my first 3D game i now want to render the floor, which is actually a plane (not a libgdx Plane) on y = 0.

I want to add a Texture to it, so i can have different floors in each level.

Now my question is: What is the best way to create and render this textured floor?

I thought about using basic Block Models made with ModelBuilder and then added a Texture, but as i can only see 1 of 6 faces a 2d Texture would be enough, so i thought about a Plane.

Can i add a Texture to a Plane, as it is a infinite face in 3D room? The last thing i then thought about were the Decals.

Are Decals what i am looking for? And how can i use them? Or do you have an other solution .

Any tutorial or other help would be great.

Thanks

Answer 1

First about Decals, decals are like Sprites but in 3d coordinate, use it like this:

private Decal decal; private DecalBatch decalBatch;

in show() or create()

decalBatch = new DecalBatch();
CameraGroupStrategy cameraGroupStrategy = new CameraGroupStrategy(camera);
decal = Decal.newDecal(textureRegion, true);
decal.setPosition(5, 8, 1);
decal.setScale(0.02f);
decalBatch.setGroupStrategy(cameraGroupStrategy);

in render()

//Add all your decals then flush()
decalBatch.add(decal);
decalBatch.flush();

also dispose with decalBatch.dispose();

notice that in future decal will be part of 3d, I personally do not encourage you to use Decals as myself using 3d plane and I saw some problems with it, to use 3d plane use like these, i paste some of my codes here

private Model createPlaneModel(final float width, final float height, final Material material, 
            final float u1, final float v1, final float u2, final float v2) {

modelBuilder.begin();
MeshPartBuilder bPartBuilder = modelBuilder.part("rect", 
GL10.GL_TRIANGLES, Usage.Position | Usage.Normal | Usage.TextureCoordinates, 
material);
//NOTE ON TEXTURE REGION, MAY FILL OTHER REGIONS, USE GET region.getU() and so on
bPartBuilder.setUVRange(u1, v1, u2, v2);
        bPartBuilder.rect(
                -(width*0.5f), -(height*0.5f), 0, 
                (width*0.5f), -(height*0.5f), 0, 
                (width*0.5f), (height*0.5f), 0, 
                -(width*0.5f), (height*0.5f), 0,
                0, 0, -1);


        return (modelBuilder.end());
    }

texture can be added as attribute to material

material.set(new TextureAttribute(TextureAttribute.Diffuse, texture)

for transparent plane that has alpha add to other attribute

attributes.add( new BlendingAttribute(color.getFloat(3)));          
attributes.add( new FloatAttribute(FloatAttribute.AlphaTest, 0.5f));

material.set(attributes);

Init the ModelInstance to get model that returned

modelInstance = new ModelInstance(createPlaneModel(...))

render in render() with ModelBatch object

modelBatch.render(modelInstance );

see these links too. http://www.badlogicgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=11884

this is my benchmark on Plane vs Decals http://www.badlogicgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=12493