This is a 3-in-1 request.
It would be cool if Sketchup was somehow able to preview a quick ambient occlusion pass for selected geometry that could be layered on multiply mode on top of the textures.
In line with that, some way of modifying all selected textures at once (saturation, hue, lightness,…) and the ability to composite them would be nice (say, in a similar fashion as compositing diffuse channels inside 3ds Max).
Thanks in advance!
Regarding batch texture modifiers: Do you think about modifying the image files, or the color deltas (the adjustment you can do in the materials browser)?
Currently, there can only be one material selected in the materials browser. What is your use case why you would want to change multiple at once? To make their colors match better (neighbouring textures) or to try out different colors on the model that involve several materials (like a plain blue color and two textures with the same blue)?
There is a plugin that can for example batch resize all textures.
Imagine you have built a scene in which you carefully textured everything, but in which you realize, in the later stages of design, that everything would look better in a light-sepia tone, or greyscaled, or hued down,… you would have to go into Photoshop and modify each texture separately. Granted, you could create some PS action to ease the task, but this feature would just be so much more powerful in the end.
I’m not sure if would benefit (or how hard would it be to implement) a node based UI, though…
Certainly the easiest way would be to have SketchUp’s color adjustment UI (brightness, saturation, hue) for a selection of multiple materials, without touching or modifying the original image files.
Otherwise, every textured material stores a path to the texture file, so it can be reloaded. If you prefer to batch-modify all the texture files with an external program, you can reload all at once with a script:
ae_MaterialsReloader.rb (2.4 KB)
I don’t think a node-based UI is a primary concern as long as the essential function of the request is not yet solved.
lightup for sketchup does this