Sketchup question

[Matt Meiser]

I know I could probably find this in the help, but asking the experts is easier. How can I add materials to Sketchup? For the piece is this thread, I modified the color of the "cherry" wood material to be a maple color, but I had to do it separately in each drawing and it came out differently.

[Dave Richards]

Matt, you can add materials to SketchUp by doing the following. save the desired texture to the Materials folder under SketchUp in your Program Files. In SketchUp, open the Materials Editor from the Materials browser-click on Create. Navigate to the texture--click on the folder on icon about midway down the right side of the editor dialog box. Then type the name you want to use in the box in the upper left corner of the editor dialog box. Click Add and it will be added to the In Model list. Make sure you have the Wood library open under the Library tab. then go back to the In Model tab. Right click on the texture and choose Add to library. Now it will be available for other models.

Here is a Maple texture. I'll see if I can get more than one. I don't know how well they tile, though. I stuck in a nice cherry texture, too.

By the way, take a minute and make rotated copies of your wood textures so you have both horizontal and vertical versions. this can save you a ton of work later when adding textures. Just use your favorite image editor and make sure to give the rotated copy a different name. Here is a QS oak texture that works pretty well. I rotated the vertical one to make the horizontal one.

[Jerom Cruz]

Dave, Would you be able to share how to create those wood materials for SketchUp? Another editor? From imported/edited photos?

[Dave Richards]

Jerom, the textures I use have all been downloaded from various websites such as
http://www.accustudio.com/exchange/t.../directory.php
or http://lemog.free.fr/lemog_v5/index.php?cat=4

There are a lot of them. Not all of them tile very well so you might have to test them. You mioght also have to adjust the scale when you edit the texture.

One thing I do for textures I use frequently is create a vertical version and a horizontal version and save them with different names. See my above post regarding that.