Sketchup Materials

[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

 

[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.

 

[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

 

[syntec4]

Thanks Nick too....

 

[Jake]

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.

 

[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

 

[Nick W]

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

 

[syntec4]

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

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?

 

[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.

 

[syntec4]

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

Cheers
Lee.

 

[Jake]

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.

 

[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: ).

 

[Neomorph]

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.

 

[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

 

[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.

 

[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)

 

[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

 

[Nick W]

#-o

:lol:

 

[SketchUp Guru]

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

 

[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