# Sketchup Materials



## MattMoore

Hi all.
Im just planning a kitchen for a customer in Sketchup.
They want an oak shaker style door.
But, I cant find oak in the colours chart?
Am I missing something??

CHeers, 
Matt


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## matt

MattMoore":2emaeciz said:


> Am I missing something??



Yes - you are...

You're missing Oak in the colours chart.  

I'll get me coat...


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## LyNx

lol


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## MattMoore

Matt, thanks for letting me know, I thought something wasnt quite right...

Problm solved anyhow, it seems you have to add in Jpegs to the materials file in the program.

CHeers all
Matt


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## Steve Maskery

Hi Matt
I forget the details, but someone here had a load of timber textures on offer. I seem to recall that it was a great idea, but it didn't scale up very well. Perhaps it has been perfected and someone recalls better than I do.
:?
If so, I'm interested!

Cheers
Steve


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## SketchUp Guru

Matt, you aren't missing an oak texture because it wasn't included in SU however here is a quartersawn oak material for you. I've already made a vertical and horizontal version. These cover most applications for the textures and save you the time adjusting in each model. You might have to try them to see which one is needed on a piece. You can edit for color as desired.










Save them into your Materials folder and then search for them in the Materials Editor to add them. Make sure to adjust the texture name at the top of the editor.


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## Sean the amateur

OK. I just have to ask. What is sketchup?


If it is a cheap CAD or drawing program then I am interested.

Sean


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## SketchUp Guru

Sean, cheap is a relative term. CAD it isn't. SketchUp is a 3D drawing program that was dreamt up by an architect who was frustrated by the complexity of the CAD software available and who wanted to be able to do an electronic version of sketching on a napkin.

_Edited to add: it is less expensive than many of the 3D CAD applications out there and I think it has saved me money and time in wood not wasted._

Even though it is not CAD it is an extremely useful tool for woodworking related stuff. You can draw to specific dimensions and create drawings which you could take to the shop to work from.

Your drawing can start out very loose and sketchy and you can tighten it up later as needed. It is great for communicating ideas. You can quickly make changes as needed and because it can display in 3D you can show your client, even if that is SWMBO, what you have in mind before you start hacking up your precious pile of wood.

BTW, here are some examples of SketchUp drawings I've done.


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## Newbie_Neil

Hi Dave

Your skill with Sketchup is just awesome.

Is the final drawing your own design for a Legacy mill?

Cheers
Neil


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## SketchUp Guru

Thank you Neil. As to the last one, no, I have the Mill and just took measurements from it. Someday I'm planning to build a cabinet or something to go under it and I was thinking about a torsion box base to stiffen it up. I've not yet built the cabinet, though.


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## Neomorph

After looking at the cost of the package I was dead set against buying it... that is until I started playing with the demo.

Now it's on my list as a "must have" as it's an excellent program which is not over complicated.

Only thing now is get the cash together to buy the sucker and at the moment I'm stoney broke.


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## engineer one

having tried many of the cad programmes,i have found that design cad is good, and inexpensive for a full programme.

what you will find is that as you get used to programmes you want more and more features, depends upon how much time you want to spend on learning it, and not on making things in wood. :lol: 

but of the programmes that convert quickly into 3d, su seems to have some advantages over the others. its rendering seems heaps better, but i think for a material and cutting list i'll stick with dcad.

paul :wink:


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## SketchUp Guru

Fortunately, Paul, SU doesn't take very long to learn and you can make a cutlist from a SU drawing if you want.


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## Nick W

I have to agree with those who think that SketchUp is a Good Thing. Try the demo and you won't be able to resist buying. As for the price it is not as expensive as many CAD/Drafting packages. My _only_ problem with it is the lack of good timber textures.

If, on the other hand, you want to go down the full CAD route then there is a family of AutoCAD-alikes that go under the generic name of Intellicad, with several developers offering their own versions of it. It is pretty much fully compatible with AutoCAD but *much* cheaper. 

At the end of the day though, since discovering SU I have stopped using IntelliCAD in favour of the sheer speed and flexibility of SU, and I speak as someone who used to write heavy-weight CAD systems for the architectural/civil engineering market.


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## Sean the amateur

Dave,

Thanks for the info. I need to look into this


Sean


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## SketchUp Guru

Sean, glad it helped. If you have questions let me know.


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## LyNx

Using two sets of materials is not a good idea. It's best to use a single map and suit to UV mapping on the object to suit. This will come clear when you have a library of 3000 materials. Create the material once, with a vertical grain direction. This will help you out no end when it comes to amending visuals 

Andy


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## SketchUp Guru

LyNx":1tzpihmb said:


> Using two sets of materials is not a good idea. It's best to use a single map and suit to UV mapping on the object to suit. This will come clear when you have a library of 3000 materials. Create the material once, with a vertical grain direction. This will help you out no end when it comes to amending visuals
> 
> Andy



Andy, I agree if you're going to have a gazillion different textures. I just use about three or four wood grain textures so it isn't so bad.


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## Nick W

Does anyone have any sources of decent tile-able wood textures, the locations of which they would be willing to share?


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## syntec4

Nick, 
I've not figured it out yet, but I would like to create some of my own(textures not licenses). Do you know how this is done? I'm a newish user of version 5. Finding it a bit of a learning curve  

Cheers 
Lee.


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## Steve Maskery

Lee,
Making the textures is easy - they are just JPG files located in the Textures directory. The bigger problem is getting them to scale and tile realistically.
Cheers
Steve


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## Nick W

Lee,

I haven't created any myself. The trick is to make the image in such a way that when it is tiled the joins don't show up in an obvious manner. Now I guess that there is a trick they use, that will probably make you go " #-o why didn't I think of that", when you find out what it is, but no one has shared it with me yet, so my forehead is (relatively) un-bruised at the moment.

Keep up the SU practice though, it won't take that long to learn.


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## syntec4

Thanks Steve,
So I could just take a picture of the actual wood that I wanted to use for a project, and crop it down to a small tile? Then drag and drop into the texture folder? 

Lee


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## syntec4

Thanks Nick too....


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## Jake

syntec4":2j63vzd2 said:


> Nick,
> I've not figured it out yet, but I would like to create some of my own(textures not licenses). Do you know how this is done? I'm a newish user of version 5. Finding it a bit of a learning curve
> 
> Cheers
> Lee.



You have to import a jpg (or whatever) through Material Browser - press Create, then tick the "use texture image" button - aim at the file you want to import as a "colour" and it will import it. As Nick hints, the difficulty is with very obvious tiling with textured images.


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## syntec4

Just another thought. What about using some of the wood sample pictures from the Suppliers web sites. Or would that be a legal no-no. 
Lee


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## Nick W

syntec4":6p3clknl said:


> So I could just take a picture of the actual wood that I wanted to use for a project, and crop it down to a small tile? Then drag and drop into the texture folder?



Yes, but you'd still have the tiling problem to cope with. Unless of course you're planning to make something covered in small squares of veneer, in which case Robert is your Father's brother


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## syntec4

Nick W":1mx3b10w said:


> syntec4":1mx3b10w said:
> 
> 
> 
> So I could just take a picture of the actual wood that I wanted to use for a project, and crop it down to a small tile? Then drag and drop into the texture folder?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, but you'd still have the tiling problem to cope with. Unless of course you're planning to make something covered in small squares of veneer, in which case Robert is your Father's brother
Click to expand...

 
OK, is it possible to make the tile bigger than the piece you want to texture? i.e. so the grain pattern finishes at the edge of the object?


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## SketchUp Guru

Lee and Nick,

there's a freeware application called Wood Workshop from Spiral Graphics that might be what you're looking for. Here's the link: http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/ww_overview.htm

Most of the textures I've seen available don't tile real well. Especially if the grain gets to be more on the wild side. I think I have some links to some free textures. If I can find them, I'll post them for you. In the meantime, try making your own with Wood Workshop

Have a great weekend.

Cheers,

Dave

Edited to add: Yes you can change the size of the texture. There are actually a couple of ways. One is to open the Materials Editor and go to the In Model tab. Select the texture you wish to edit and click Edit. You can adjust size, color, etc. I actually get a fair amount of mileage out of the cherry texture and make color and light/dark adjustments as needed.


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## syntec4

Hi Dave,
Downloading it now. Thanks for that, I'm sure it will be very useful.

Cheers
Lee.


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## Jake

syntec4":11d89eg6 said:


> OK, is it possible to make the tile bigger than the piece you want to texture? i.e. so the grain pattern finishes at the edge of the object?



You are likely to have either a problem finding a jpg big enough without blowing it up and making the grain far bigger than it is in reality - I don't know if there is a maximum image size.


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## Nick W

Lee, and everyone else for that matter,

There is a book about SketchUp, which I found invaluable as a method of getting up to speed fast. It is available from @Last's site but it is VERY expensive.

However, if you buy SU from CABS CAD you can get the book at the same time at a discounted price, or at least you could when I bought it. (Now how do I get them to give me commission on all these sales I'm generating for them? :lol: ).


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## Neomorph

Nick W":2nb0m1he said:


> Lee,
> 
> I haven't created any myself. The trick is to make the image in such a way that when it is tiled the joins don't show up in an obvious manner. Now I guess that there is a trick they use, that will probably make you go " #-o why didn't I think of that", when you find out what it is, but no one has shared it with me yet, so my forehead is (relatively) un-bruised at the moment.



The way to make tileable graphics IS easy... Here is how to do it.

Take a pic of your texture... Try and cut out a square that doesn't have any obvious signature marks like a huge knot for instance. You will then end up with a block we call X.

*X*

You then take X and copy it and past it next to it to get...

*XX*

... Take the X on the right and flip it horizontally to get a block we will call Y

*XY*

OK... now copy X again and past it below the existing X

*XY
X*

Take the X you pasted and flip it vertically to make a block we will call W

*XY
W*

Take the W block and copy and past it to the right...

*XY
WW*

... then flip that new W block horizontally to create a block that is called Z

*XY
WZ*

Save that as a new jpg and I guarantee that it will be tileable. Simple really. The trick is to find a grain that is as perfectly vertical as possible to make the image look credible.


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## Steve Maskery

John,
At this time of night it sounds stupidly easy and hideously difficult at the same time! 

I'll have a go tomorrow.
Goodnight all,
S
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


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## Neomorph

All it is it taking an existing pic and copying it then flipping over. If you have some pics that you want tiling just pm me and I'll do them for you. It's pretty much a two minute job to get them to tile... what takes the time is finding a good angle so that the tiles don't turn out as diamonds.

Here is what it looks like if you take a letter "a" in a square and then follow my instruction.

You take...







... and it becomes ...






It's as easy as that. Once that has been done it will mirror on each side.


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## Steve Maskery

Crystal clear now, and, yes, so easy!

If anyone makes some really good ones, and wants to share them, I'll be happy to host them on my site. Just email me with the JPG and I'll do the rest.

Cheers
Steve (with a not very well-disguised plea for freebies)


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## SketchUp Guru

Here's a link for some free wood textures. Clearly not all of them will tile perfectly but I bet John can fix some of them.  http://lemog.free.fr/lemog_v5/thumbnails.php?album=8


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## Nick W

#-o 

:lol:


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## SketchUp Guru

Here's a beech texture for your collection, Steve, John, Nick...
http://www.sketchup.com/forum/download. ... /hetre.jpg


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## Aragorn

Neomorph's tiling method is really good _and _simple.
It can result in a kind of diamond effect going on at the centre of the tile.

I thought I'd just mention that once you have the edges of the tile correct (as per Neomorph's method), then you can do what you want to the middle.

In other words, if your tile is looking diamond-y, just use photo-editing software to "correct" the grain - just don't alter the bitmap near the edges!

HTH


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## Steve Maskery

Thanks, Dave, generous as ever. I'll swap you for this burr elm:




Click for bigger image.

Cheers
Steve


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## SketchUp Guru

Sweet! Thanks Steve.


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## Jake

Here's a rosewood


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## Adam

The rules are quite specific. Just to draw attention to those who haven't checked recently...."UKW expects members to behave respectfully and not to personally attack or be abusive to other members."

Thanks
Adam

Mod Edit: Newbie_Neil I have tidied up this post by editing and deleting any posts that mentioned software licences/upgrades.


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## Nick W

Hi Folks,

I've just been furkling around in the SketchUp forum and found a link to this place, which has a lot of _free _wood textures amongst other stuff. The server seems a bit slow though, so you may need a modicum of patience.


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## SketchUp Guru

Nick, I've seen that site and it does have quite a few textures. Not many of the wood textures tile very well but using the method described by Neomorph, it should be easy enough to make tileable textures from most of them.


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