This article provides a detailed guide on how to create and apply texture materials to a 3D model using SketchUp. It explains the process of importing images, adjusting their dimensions, and using projected materials to create a realistic texture on a 3D model.
Key Insights
- The article guides the reader through the process of creating texture materials in SketchUp by importing images from a computer and adjusting their dimensions to fit the model.
- SketchUp allows users to create a variety of materials for different parts of a model, such as the body and head of a fish, and apply them to specific areas. This is done using the create material dialog box and the paint bucket tool.
- Projected materials are used in SketchUp to apply a texture across an entire 3D face rather than individual sections. This method helps to avoid a fragmented look on the model, creating a more realistic texture.
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Alright, so now that we're done with our fountain, we will. Save our file and then we'll go to. File.
Open and we're going to find our C drive. Then go to our SKP 101 file downloads folder. Double click that and will go to koifish.skp now click open.
This file version was originally built in Sketchup 17, so we're using Sketchup 2022, so it's giving you a warning that this model was opened in Sketchup 2017, so you will no longer be able to open this file in 2017. If you save it in 2022, I will click don't show his message again. Select OK now you just see a completed model for koi fish.
However, it does not have the characteristic koi fish scales and colors. Let's add them as texture materials. If we go to our materials dialog box.
You can see that if we hit the home button right here. There are four basic materials in our model. These are basic colors and I've applied those elements on the koi fish.
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However, we are now going to build the materials for the koi body and koi head using texture images. The icon here. Is create material icon when you click this icon the create material dialog box will open.
In this dialog box we can do things like rename our material choose our color from either the color wheel or different color sliders or we can choose a texture image. We click this button it'll bring up an area where we can load an image from our computer. And then we can adjust the opacity of the image which we previously talked about when we were looking at the water.
Let's begin by changing the name of our material to koi body left so we can type in here. Koi body left. We will not be using color for material so instead let's check the use texture image.
You will now see a file Explorer window open navigate to your C drive. And go to your SQP one on one file downloads. And you can see that under all supported images I can see all the images that I have available, you can see koi body left koi body right and koi head select the koi body left.
And click open you will now see a preview of our texture appear in this box. Also under the texture dialog box texture image you can see that there are dimensions. Sketchup will automatically resize your texture to the proportions at which the image was created so I would like to change these dimensions here from one foot to one foot three inches.
And you can see that the dimensions automatically update. Because they are. Locked with the aspect ratio.
So I will click OK. Now let's make a new texture. Now call this one.
Koi body right we will do the same process. In this case I can click this button here which is browse for material image and I can choose koi body right. You will see now this image updated to the right side of the koi fish.
We do not need to change our aspect ratio dimensions as we're going to keep that the same as the other one so I will click OK. Now let's repeat this process one more time for the koi body head. So I will click create material.
And then koi. Body. Head.
And I will click in browse for the koi head.jpg file which is this gray one right here. Now click open. This time.
We can see that because we were still selecting this material previous one our dimensions are wrong. We want this to be a square and it's you know. Now it's more of a rectangle type shape.
So I want to change this dimension to six inches. So I change this to six inches. You can see that this automatically change the three inches so I had this aspect ratio locked.
So I will click this to unlock the aspect ratio and I will make this. The vertical dimension six inches. I was like OK.
Now you can see that we have all three of our texture images in our in model section in our materials dialog box. We can also click when these are selected. We actually go to edit and we can change the name and do some sort of adjustments without going into the create material.
So that's our way of kind of editing the material that's already in the model. And the color shown here. Is basically the average color as in this entire image.
All right. Now I will go back and I'll click my paint bucket tool. And I'll go back to select.
I want to paint. Which side should I paint first? I want to paint the head. So I click this coy body head.
And I paint the head. You can see when I zoom in that this image is all broken and fragmented in the various shapes of that image. Similar to the fountain with all curved shapes are made up of triangles.
It's just whether or not they are softened or not. In this case because this image was applied to those triangulations. It created this fragmented look to the material.
That's not the look that we want to go to. We're going to try to use projected materials to create a nice material projection onto the koi fish. If I go to view hidden geometry.
You can see all these triangulations that I was just talking about. Go back to view and uncheck hidden geometry. So textures are not applied across hidden geometry boundary lines.
But are applied to the individual 3D faces. But if we want that texture to be applied to a 3D face as a whole. We need to use projected materials.
So I will undo my texture. Click this undo button. And then I will go to the layers dialog box.
Which has now been renamed to tags. It's a little bit confusing if you're used to using an older SketchUp. Because they change the names from layers to tags.
So I will click tags. And then you can see here that I have this tag named textures. That is non-visible.
The visibility is this little eyeball here on the left. If the eyeball is shown it means it's visible. And if it's empty it means it's not shown.
So I can click this eyeball. And we can see that now I have these rectangles that have appeared. We're going to take our three textures that we created.
And we're going to paint each one of these rectangles. Each of those materials. So I'll go to my materials.
And I will click koi body left. And I will paint the left side of the fish right here. Koi body left.
Then I will select koi body right. Orbit around. And paint this plane.
The koi body right material. And then finally I will paint koi body head at the top right here. Alright.
Now we have all of these planes with these materials. We're going to pause and pick this up in the next video. Where we will project these materials onto our fish.
So I will save my file. See you in the next video.