The materials / color window in SU for Mac has me completely baffled. I can’t even figure out how to save a new or edited material to a folder outsider the model for use on other models. Does anyone have a suggestion for a good tutorial or document that will walk me through this mysterious window. I have moved my imported textures from Library / Applications to a folder in Documents so they are backed up via iCloud, and have made a folder there for my custom textures. I can’t figure out how to save textures to that file. Any suggestions? I don’t think I am the Lone Ranger in finding this window confusing on a Mac. Thanks
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We’ve just launched some lessons regarding Site Design to our Campus page. Here’s a link to the lesson dealing with Materials / Materials Browser. Let me know if that helps at all:
https://learn.sketchup.com/course/materials-textures/materials-sources
Aside from just doing copy and paste, the Colors palette uses the macOS color system. You can stash textures.
Here’s a video to show you how that works.
In my test I was able to stash the texture while in 2019, then open 2016, and fill a new face with the same texture.
At a minimum, all I am really trying to accomplish is this:
I would like to copy a customized texture from a model to a file for future use in another project. This seems like it should be simple, but I cannot figure out how to do it simply . The Eneroth Material Extractor from eric-s looks like it will work to extract all files from a model, then I could choose the ones I wanted to save. I will experiment with the Collada export tonight. Thanks for your suggestions.
Select the material in Colors in Model. It’s show up in the larger square to the left of the eye dropper at the bottom of the Colors panel. Then switch to your Custom Textures collection and drag the texture from that square at the bottom left up next to the other thumbnails in the Custom Textures.
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Once again, DaveR to the rescue. It seems so simple and direct now that I know how to do it. Thanks again.
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Oddly enough, that technique does not drag the customized name of the texture to the next collection. Crazy!
Perfect! I don’t think I would ever have the patience to discover that approach myself.
Thanks
So for every material you want to put in a library you are creating a new library?
you can use an existing library name to add to it, and duplicate works with all materials in any other library, i.e. no selection will duplicate all…
john
Thanks all for the help, my immediate problem is solved. But I do think a bit more complete explanation from SketchUp of this window would be helpful.
To copy a texture from your model, keeping the same name, to a custom collection, for later use: Select the model collection. Right-click the texture and choose “edit” , Change the collection in the pull-down menu at the top to be your custom collection. Drag the big image that appeared with “edit” up into the custom collection window. It will have the same name in the custom collection as the original.
Not on my Mac. I just tested to verify.
What was your result?
This is interesting. I just tested again. If you drag up from the little image on the lower left side by the dropper, the texture is copied, but the name is removed. If you drag up from the bigger square in the editing area, the name goes with it.
I think that’s because the material editor is something SketchUp patched atop the macOS color chooser whereas the swatches and pixel-sampler eyedropper in the bottom are from the original color chooser. MacOS doesn’t know anything about SketchUp materials or material names.
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Yes, that’s what I get. Of all the methods, It seems none retain colorizing that you add to the material using the color settings in “edti”. They appear to go with the material, but if you relaunch SketchUp the colorizing won’t be there in your custom collection. The only way to transfer that as well, is to copy from one model to another (FAIK).