Hello everyone,
I recently started working from home one day a week, which means I use SketchUp on the agency’s Mac and on my PC at home. I’ve noticed a difference in the quality of the texture rendering. I tested the same 3D model with the same texture, and on the PC it looks more pixelated than on the Mac.
What could be the reason for this? Are there any settings I should adjust?
Thanks in advance.
are they both using their respective new engine ? maybe one is using the old one ?
maybe one is not using the maximal material size ?
(both these options are in the preference / graphics section)
other than that, no, I haven’t noticed any difference between platforms.
Is there a diffeerence between your monitors? A high-res Mac monitor would display things differently from a, say FullHD PC monitor run at 100%. Also, the SketchUp settings let you adjust the level of antialiasing used.
Hello, thank you for your feedback.
Both SketchUp setups are indeed using the “new graphics engine”, and in both cases the options for using maximum texture sizes are correctly enabled.
Here are the setup details:
1. Mac Setup
Model Name: Mac Studio
Model Identifier: Mac13,1
Chip: Apple M1 Max
Total Cores: 10 (8 performance, 2 efficiency)
Memory: 32 GB
Display:
Brand: LG
Model Number: 32UN880-B
Series: 32UN880-B
Color: Black
Type: 4K UHD
Size: 32"
Resolution: 3840 × 2160 (16:9 aspect ratio)
2. PC Setup
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X, 6-Core (3.70 GHz)
Installed RAM: 32 GB
Graphics Card: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX
Display:
Brand: Millenium
Size: 49"
Resolution: 5120 × 1440 (5K QHD 1440p)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Screen Type: Flat
Response Time: 4 ms
Refresh Rate: 120 Hz
Special Feature: Ultra-wide screen
It’s surprising because the difference in texture quality is very noticeable between the two setups—the Mac produces textures that are clearly superior.
Your Mac screen is smaller and is also 4x the screen resolution. That’s why it looks sharper and clearer
Also it may be that the graphics settings on your AMD graphics card on the PC are set lower.
Anisotropic filtering being set lower would make textures look worse
It could be due to graphics settings or screen resolution differences. Check the OpenGL settings in SketchUp on your PC and make sure hardware acceleration and texture quality are set high.
The OP said that the new graphics engine are being used, that means Metal on Mac and DirectX on PC, OpenGL is used with the old graphics engine.
yeah. it’s like comparing a retina screen and a big tv.
same image, mac has more smaller pixels.
Thank you for your replies.
I don’t really understand the principle of resolution…
The screen used with the Mac
Type: 4K UHD
Size: 32"
Resolution: 3840 × 2160 (16:9 aspect ratio)
…is supposedly of better quality than the one used with the PC ?
Size: 49"
Resolution: 5120 × 1440 (5K QHD 1440p)
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Yet the second one (the larger screen) should be superior (5K), while the first is only 4K… isn’t it ?
I understand that the bigger the image, the more the rendering may seem of lower quality, but I’m running SketchUp in a window on my PC, and the window doesn’t exceed the size of the smallest screen.
Besides, in other software, the texture quality on the PC with the ultra-wide monitor looks really good.
The LG monitor is 16:9 aspect ratio:
3840/16=240
2160/9=240
The Millennium is 32:9 ratio:
5120/32=160
1440/9=160
The difference you see is the higher pixel density, disregarding if the pixels are larger or smaller between the devices.
more maths.
say your screen A is 50cm tall. it means 2160 pixels fit in 50cm.
it means a single pixel is about 0,23mm large. it’s really small.
now, your screen B is 70cm tall. it’s better. but it’s only 1440px in 70cm
this means that the pixels are about 0,49mm large.
the smaller the pixels, the sharper your image looks.
my mac has 2 screens, 24" and 27", both 1920 x 1080. since they have the same resolution, but one is smaller than the other, then its pixels are smaller too. and it looks slightly sharper.
my pc is also 1920 x 1080 but it’s 16". so its pixels are almost half the size of the ones in my 27" screen.
my pc looks sharper than my smaller mac. yet they have the same resolution of 1080p
the whole 1080 - 4k - 5k thing is commercial. by itself it doesn’t matter, you need to look at the physical dimensions of your screen aswell.
in 2015 sony had a 4k sony phone. its resolution (the number mike calculated) was around 800.
meanwhile, your LG 4k monitor has a resolution of 240. because it’s physically bigger.
Your ultrawide screen is basically 2 lower resolution screens side by side
In any given situation your eyes are looking at 20-25% more pixels on the Mac screen.
Other things you can double check on the PC - make sure you have a high level of Multisample Antialiasing turned on.
Make sure your AMD drivers are upto date - AMD graphics are known for doing some weird things, so making sure they are on the latest might help anything that is buggy.
How do they look if you use the same monitor? There are more factors that can make it look better on one monitor than on another. There are different kinds of LCD monitors.
Ah great, thank you so much for all your answers and all these explanations about resolution !
What I take away is that to understand the visual quality of a screen, you actually need to know how big one pixel on that screen is.
The screen size and its aspect ratio, divided by its resolution, give the size of a pixel.
The smaller the pixel, the denser the screen is in pixels, and the better the image will appear. (4K/5K and all that are just marketing terms that don’t make sense on their own.)
I’ll definitely take a look at antialiasing to set it to the maximum. I’ll also check if my graphics card updates have been properly installed, but I’m 99% sure they have.
Thanks again, I now understand the difference in how textures are rendered !
Oops, I might not have fully understood after all — I have a quick follow-up question I forgot to ask.
If I create scenes and send them to LayOut to put together a short project presentation with perspective views, then export the document as a PDF to share by email, will the image quality depend on whether I export it from a PC or a Mac? Or does it only depend on the quality of the screen where the PDF is viewed in the end?
the latter.
if you export the same file with the same parameters, then you should have a pdf with the same quality.
however, showing the pdf on a high density screen (like a retina screen) or a low density one (a 10y old projector) will make a big difference.
indeed.
screen size just means big or small image.
pixel density means sharp or blurry image.
