A PBR Material question, that I have a sneaking suspicion has laready been answered but I can't find it in a forum search

SketchUp
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Hi oh learned ones. I am slowly getting my head around using PBR material but am unsure if it is possible to add new materials to the existing material catorgories that ship with SketchUp. I know (now) how to create new catagories for materials I find and use in my models (Thanks @JustinTSE) but I can’t seem to find out if it’s possible to add them to the existing. As I said in the title of this post I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ve seen the answer to this somewhere but in my old muddled brain I can’t remember where it was or what the asnwer to the question is.

Thanks in advance.

P.S. Don’t get old, keep your brains working ‘cos when you stop working them they seem to get next to useless from then on. :grinning_face:

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Does this help?

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Yeah I’ve watched that (I watch most of Justin’s videos) but my question was is it possible to add materials to the exsisting categories that ship with SketchUp, Not creating new ones. I am aware of the model size implications of loading lots of PBR materials into my models but I have a couple that I use all the time and having to load them in each time i start a new model is a bit of a pain.

Thanks for the video suggestion though and I can thoroughly recommend all of Justin’s videoe on his channel https://www.youtube.com/@Thesketchupessentials/videos to anyone who wants to learn SketchUp or improve their skills.

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Make a template.

My SKP templates (handily keyed to my LO templates) have my styles, scenes and commonly used materials already in the model. Along with my Tags, etc.

I also don’t understand why selecting a different collection in the Materials pallet doesn’t work for you… but if you don’t need hundreds of them… make a template.

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Now that’s a good suggestion and I can’t beleive that I didn’t think of that. See what I mean about old underworked brains!

I’d still be interested in knowing if it’s possible to add to the exisiting but now just out of curiosity rather than need.

Thanks @bmike Clearly your brain is still functioning as normal and long may it continue.

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Pretty sure they are just folders on your drive that you can drag drop to.

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Oh ok, Thanks

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The shipped materials are in folders in ProgramData/SketchUp/SketchUp 2025/Materials.

I would suggest NOT adding your own materials to those folders. If you have some reason to reinstall SketchUp you will lose those materials unless you remember to retrieve them first. Instead use the intended default location to save your collections of materials. That’s shown in Window>Preferences>Files. Those materials folders won’t be overwritten if you have a reason to reinstall SketchUp. Using the default locations for Materials, Components, Environments, Styles, and Templates make migrating to the next version of SketchUp much easier, too.

I have created many collections of materials over the years and I just bring them forward to the next version of SketchUp when the time comes.

Once you have created a collection of materials you can easily add to it y dragging a material’s thumbnail from In Model to the Collection in the Materials panel right in SketchUp.