I would like to save 90 degree rotated versions of my wood species materials in the same materials collection. For example, I would like to have “Cherry-Horizontal” and “Cherry-Vertical” available. I mostly design woodworking projects, and this would save having to rotate my woodgrain textures about half the time! Any suggestions on how to accomplish this would be greatly appreciated!
I’m running SU 2018 Pro on a PC.
You would need to create new SKM files for the rotated textures. Perhaps the most dependable method would be to create the rotated versions from scratch, You can export the existing image and then re-import it after rotating it.
Frankly, I dislike having vertical and horizontal versions of my wood grain materials. Having to use both vertical and horizontal materials would needlessly bloat the file and it creates extra work for applying the materials.
Once you’ve applied the material to a face and rotated it, you can sample the rotated material to apply to other faces that need the same grain orientation, even if the rotated material is in a different component. Besides, what do you do when the material needs to be rotated at another angle?
Here are a couple of examples. In each case there are several “boards” but they all have the same orientation. Once I have a horizontal part and a horizontal part textured, it’s easy to texture the rest of the components appropriately by sampling the correctly oriented face. My wood grain textures typically run between 7 and 14 feet long depending on species so I can pick out different parts of the texture for different pieces in the model.
The grain-texture is an image-file.
Let’s say you have a ‘…vertical’ texture material.
Save its image-file externally and edit that with an app like Gimp and Rotate it so it’s vertical.
Now in SketchUp make a new material based on the vertical one.
Name it ‘…horizontal’.
Swap its height and width values, and link its texture to the image-file you have just edited.
Now you have two materials - a horizontal and a vertical version.
Save those materials to a Collection, located on one of your normal Materials paths…
Now in other projects you can access either version as desired.
Repeat with other grained materials as you wish…
Mike, look at what your method does to the texture. It crops the image to the shape of the face you applied it to…
Wow, DaveR, thank you for the quick and detailed response! Your input has led me to rethink creating two orientations for my wood grain materials. I may just do a couple of the ones I use most often … I have a large amount of hard maple in the barn right now. 
You’ve also emphasized that applying materials that will need to be positioned, rotated, etc., should be done directly to individual faces with components open for editing. I was running into roadblocks with materials that I had applied to components when they were not open for editing.
Lastly, your practice of using textures that are typically longer than the faces to which you are applying them, and then positioning the textures differently on different pieces in your model is brilliant! The examples you posted looked very real, as you avoided seeing repeat patterns on adjacent boards!
Thanks again. I’m excited to apply what you’ve taught me on my current chest of drawers design!
Thanks to you as well, TIG! The steps you outlined are very clear, and I’m going to apply them to my most-used wood grain materials, to create other versions that I’ll use all the time.
Yes, it does, I did not take time to correct that, I was merely showing that by Make Unique Texture, you would get a texture in the ‘in model collection’ , ready to be saved (By OP’s request)
Off course, the methods displayed in your examples are preferable for a professional look, I would consider those ‘Advanced techniques’
Hi @DaveR
I do love the work that you post, and I’m wondering if I can be a tad nosey.
Can I ask where you acquired your textures from?
I have a fairly good collection building up from various sources, and have also just discovered a site called ‘Arroway Textures’. They seem to do some cracking textures although rather large in file size. I purchased a couple to try and they seem rather good. They do seem to supply all the various maps to go with each one though, which means they look great when rendered.
Kind regards
Mike
Hello MichaelSiggers, I’m interested in DaveR’s response to your question, too. Have you seen his Flickr account, where a lot of his designs are posted? Gorgeous work!
I found two sources right in the 3D Warehouse:
akb Wood Species by Edward F. (one model about 60 common species)
Real Wood by Chris Currie (collection of six models with >1000 of exotic species)
I made each a local collection of materials for my own personal use. I’m not doing any commercial work … to busy with the “friends and family” plan!
I’ll check out Arroway Textures, too. I’d like to see the difference in quality from a “paid for” source.
Hi @RobM
Not looked for any on 3D Warehouse but will give that a go.
I’ve got most of mine from ‘Sketchup Texture Club’. They have plenty to choose from and they are in JPEG format, and suit the main type of work I do.
Bought a few from Sketchucation as well, and Rich, from there, is really helpful too.
The Arroway ones seem to look really good, although, as I say, they are large in file size. One I tried, a Maple Wooden Floor, was something like 46MB. Tried it though, with the included Bump and Reflectivity maps, and it looked great in Thea.
Only other thing is the cost. Their sets and bundles are not cheap.
Kind regards
Mike
Thanks @MichaelSiggers and @RobM. My sources vary. Some of them come from photos of full length boards while others, like those on the top and frame of the workbench are hand drawn. The key thing for me is that they are long images and not the little squares common in most textures. And I’m not interested in seamless wood grain materials. Trees don’t make seamless textures so it doesn’t make sense to me to use them to represent wood.
I think those long textures are really important when you have something like this bench from Sweden.
I was fortunate to have some long and wide pine boards to work with which was appropriate since the sides and lid of the original were made from wide boards.
You couldn’t do a live edge piece like this bench with little square seamless textures.
As for things like bump maps, I cheat and use the texture as the bump map. I used the oak texture I applied to these stools for that but changed the material to look like black paint.
Thank you for the reply @DaveR
Yeah, that’s what I’m trying to build up for my wood collection is long samples so I can pick and choose bits without any repetition.
Totally agree about the seamless thing. Man made floor tiles, fine, but with natural materials, it looks wrong.
The one area I struggle with is end grain.
Kind regards
Mike
That can be tough. I have some hand drawn end grain for cherry, maple and ash but for other woods I usually just fake it by rotating and scaling the texture on the ends of the boards.Usually there’s not much end grain to see anyway.
That work is stunning @DaveR!
I’m amazed that some of those textures are hand drawn. That’s amazing!
I like the trick with Bump maps as well. So you literally use the same texture for the bump map? I thought the bump map has to be monochrome?
Mike
PS if you could just send me one of those workbenches in the post, that would be smashing 
Would fit in well to my workshop.
Thank you.
I expect they are supposed to be monochrome and some rendering guru will tell me I’m doing it wrong but it works well enough for what I want so I don’t care.
I wish I had one to send you. No room in my shop for one that size now although I’d like it if I had one. You can build your own, though, from the plans I made for it. I see they are on sale right now, too.
If I remember correctly @DaveR, you also did a design for a client, of an extending dining table. Would those plans be for sale or not, because that was for a client?
I’m in the UK, but I do love that design you did.
Mike
@MichaelSiggers, unfortunately the plan for that table was done for a client so it isn’t available for me to sell.
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