MS Office (Powerpoint, Word and Excel) allow SU models to be inserted into documents for interactive presentations etc.
We are trying to leverage this capability for our clients but the texture colours change dramatically when inserted. I’ve tested on two different Macs using different versions of SU and Office and the OS.
If you are able, could you please import an RGB image into SU, save the model, then insert it into one of the Office apps. Please report back here to say whether the colours have changed. I will then know if the issue is ours or more generalised.
Here are the results I’m getting:
LH side: Model in SU RH side: Same model inserted into Powerpoint
Well ! First of all thanks for letting me know about this awesome feature!
This certainly does open up a few interesting workflow possibilities using Powerpoint instead of Layout!!
Second: the answer to your question is:
I’m on PC by the way (win11)
Layout and Office both use a default “global illumination” setting to simulate light/shade and render the image.
You can see how this affects colour/shade when you place a cube of the same color sides into the model.
Sketchup’s can be overridden by selecting these Shadow settings: Light = 0, Dark = 80, Use Sun for Shading = On. Then you can see that rotating a 3d object has no effect on the coloured faces…they are all as per RGB values.
You can prove this by rotating the model within Office…the colours as well as the shading changes.
I used Excel to test.
There’s no question that Office is simplifying the render… SketchUp’s image quality is much “cleaner”.
Office seems to be affecting color more, with a cold hue for face-on images and a warm hue for images facing to the right hand side… dont ask me why!
Thanks for that. It is indeed a very useful feature (when it works)
I can see what you’re talking about in terms of the lighting, but I’m pretty sure that has no bearing on my example as the hues themselves have changed. Red has become blue and vice versa. Green remains green but much of the yellow has been removed.
I experimented with inverting the colours in Photoshop to see if I could invert them prior to importing into SU, but there didn’t seem to be an easy fix.
I think I’m going to have to go back and look again.
And any graphics/display driver settings for Quality vs Performance
In the past I’ve encountered many images that dont display properly in various software, due to some unique compression settings. Have you tried different images to see if the issue goes away?
hm, I’ve had a similar issue a couple years ago, not in SU though.
I worked on some flyers and visuals in illustrator, in the end, I exported them in png and uploaded them to a google drive.
Surprise, in the google drive, they had messed up colours, a bit similar to yours.
If I exported non transparent png it was fine, jpg and tiff too, but standard png (with transparence) + google drive upload would be messed up.
out of curiosity, have you tried another file type ? Idk what you used, but say it was a jpg, try with a png or a tiff ? we can see on the photos (Sam’s with the car) that Office appears to compress / blur a bit the 3d and its images, maybe similar to my Drive bug, the error lies in the compression ?
