Hi guys, so I have no idea how to add a texture (book cover) to a book, already tried through texture - projected, and is not working. Has anyone any idea how to do this?
If the image is imported as a texture, don’t project it. That will distort it. Just open the book object for editing and paint the material onto the faces. You’ll likely need to resize the material and adjust it’s position on the faces. If you share the .skp file we can help you more easily.
As for projecting a texture onto faces, if the face isn’t parallel with the textured face, the texture will be distorted. It works just like using a projector to project an image on a wall. You can see that in this image.
Hello, here is the file, could you please take a look? Thank you.
BOOK.skp (1.9 MB)
First edit the texture to eliminate the projected property. Projecting the texture is not appropriate here. Then edit the size of the texture image to fit the height of the book.
Turn on Hidden geometry so you can apply the material to just the front cover of the book to start with. Apply the material, right click on the face and choose Texture>Position. Then you can move the red pin to the lower corner of the cover.
After that you can sample the applied texture with the eye dropper and paint the rest of the faces oon the cover.
It loks like you need to edit the dimensions of the book to make it closer to the actual aspect ratio of the cover image.
Before you do any of this edit the style to turn off Endpoints and Extensions. They just get in the way.
How will you be using this book once you have the cover on it? Is your model strictly about the book or will it be used in a larger context such as on a bookshelf in a room?
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Hey, it´s somehow working, I can get it right on the spine and around the joints, but I will keep trying. Thanks again!
I just saw a book in the warehouse and got curious how it came to be 
That’s a great reason to try modeling one yourself. If it was only to be used as entourage in a larger model it would be a little overly detailed.
As for the texturing the entire cover with a single image, you need to give some consideration to the dimensions of the image and the dimensions of the area it needs to cover. As an example, I kind of eyeballed where the front cover part ends (red guideline on the right) and used that to determine the width of the back cover and the spine. The spine ends up too narrow for that part of your book geometry.
You’d have to choose how to deal with that. Either make the book thinner or make it taller and wider or edit the cover image to add a bit in between the front and back to make more texture for the spine.
This sort of thing would be typical for any texture that isn’t intended to repeat.
carte.skp (485.8 KB)
- with UV unwrapping and UV mapping (made in Blender, imported as DAE in SketchUp)
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You can also do what Mihai did on blender with an extension called WrapR, blender is a great software but it can be a bit overwhelming for new users but it’s definitely one of the best options. You could also use other extensions like thrupaint and SketchUV.