“In Model” material thumbnails default to the cube thumbnail in Sketchup 2026 when any of the options are checked for metalness, roughness, etc. It is significantly harder to tell materials apart in the cube view, if not impossible. Most of the transparent textures are completely indistinguishable. Please update with a global option to set the thumbnail view to flat for all material thumbnails.
And can we please have a back button in materials, like in components?
Also, why are the “create collection” functions different in materials and components? It always confuses me when I am trying to add a location to my favorites in one or the other. Wouldn’t it make more sense if they worked the same way?
In 2026 you can right-click on a preview thumbnail for any material, and choose whether it’s a cube, flat, or automatic (based on whether the material has additional maps):
Right click on any larger thumbnail (the one at the top, not one of the individual thumbnails), and whatever you choose is global. You do still need to select a material to then see its flat version. I don’t know if there is a preference set somewhere, but the next files you open are also set to the one you chose.
In the image you last shared, the material is still showing as a cube in the palette. I am not talking about the selected material image at the top.
The problem is that I can’t tell which material is which from the 3D cube icons in the palette, and the only way to make those flat is to uncheck all of the new material options (metalness, roughness, etc).
Respectfully, Sketchup Team, this is the exact opposite of what we need.
My 2 cents in having used SketchUp for 16 years, 13+ professionally.
I recognize this is my own opinion and everyone’s different but here we go:
Material Browser Improvements:
-Search by material name (at least for “In Model” category at minimum)
In projects with 50+ materials the list becomes cumbersome to navigate, thankfully it’s alphabetic so good organization and naming conventions pay off here… but search would go a LONG way to improving UX here and keeping up with the workflow speed and pacing that fast SketchUp users love about this app.
Thumbnail Preview:
-Keep the thumbnails in the materials list flat like previous versions. Trying to show PBR lighting/shading in a small thumbnail is a legibility nightmare with lots of materials present in the material browser. I’ve seen many requests and workarounds for returning to the flat thumbnails and the fact that this isn’t addressed with 2026 version is rather concerning to me.
-Allow the user to set the “large” selected thumbnail to cube or flat as you already do but this shouldn’t change the smaller thumbnail “browser list”
-Flat face/Rectangle, Sphere, or ISO cube is industry standard material preview for a reason. This perspective tilted cube is just not helpful IMO, wastes thumbnail negative space it could be occupying as well that an ISO cube, sphere, or flat face would otherwise fill
-Dark grey background behind the thumbnail feels out of place with the overall UI and does not improve legibility in the majority of cases. Materials vary extensively in their contrast ratio against this background but given that concrete, steel/metal, and darker tones are common architectural materials in most projects, the dark grey does a disservice to legibility/contrast ratios in typical conditions here. If SketchUp was in a dark theme, this would make more sense, but it feels very out of place in the current “light theme” UI.
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Really that’s about it… Not getting picky on anything else, just those two primary UX improvements are what is needed in my opinion.
Global option for all thumbnails in material browser to be flat square preview (either albedo/diffuse only, or literally just the existing PBR cube with an ortho camera pointed at one side of it so it yields a flat face thumbnail)
Add material browser “Search By Material Name” functionality
It is possible to change the visualization mode on windows. Trimble has been or was, who knows, working on a new UI for Mac, to have the same interface on both platforms. There was a beta version more than a year ago but we have not received any news regarding this update and the test version isn’t available anymore.
I think that Trimble is focusing on making SketchUp part of a workflow using other Trimble tools and adding more AI features, but according to what I’ve seen some tools work only on windows, they’re leaving Mac users behind. I thought that by this time we were going at least to have sketchup studio for Mac, if you need tools like revit importer, or scan essentials you must either use a windows machine or a virtual machine like parallels.
Plus one for original flat thumbnails in materials window. Perhaps a special “preview” toggle to check how a material might look. But tiny cubes or spheres are useless when trying to visualize a material that will appear on extensive flat planes.
Might helped, i try to copy old material folder from 2023, some material now showed flat, but the copied folder title doesnt showup on drag down material menu, must select Material/parent directory on the dragdown box and click the folder, some folder that got merged showed flat material and cubed material on the thumbnail, might try to restart later
