I’m noticing a couple of new issues when using and modifying materials, and hopefully this community can help me get past them. I’m using SketchUp Pro 2018 on macOS 10.13.
Thanks.
Upon further testing, color edits are being saved, but it seems like the color wheel settings, CMYK/RGB values aren’t locking in as-typed, and are instead being adjusted by SketchUp to be a similar “mix.”
Also, only some materials seem to duplicate while others do not. I can’t seem to find any difference between the materials to determine why one would behave this way and another would not.
It may provide a clear understanding of the described issue if you were to upload one or more relevant examples to exhibit what you have encountered.
Sure thing! Here’s an example of a color duplicating automatically when I start painting faces with it.
Here’s one showing how the values I type in are being modified, even though the color is updating correctly as I’ve typed them in in the CMYK sliders.
If anyone knows a solution to this issue — specifically the duplicating materials — I’d love to hear it. It is incredibly frustrating to find so many extra materials when I’m obsessed with creating clean, efficient models. Having duplicates leads to so many headaches too, especially when editing a material, as it’s hard to tell which faces are attached to each material until I edit. Trying to correct this issue is even more frustrating, because there’s no quick “replace” except for with the default material, forcing me to manually paint each face again, one by one with the correct (original) material.
Most people aren’t having that problem, so reinstalling might solve the issue.
One of the lessons I learned from "Real World Color Management (Peachpit Press) is, in short, never use CMYK unless you’re a real printing professional actually working with inks and printing presses. The longer answer is that both MacOS and Windows think and store all colors in RGB, so any color picker presenting you with CMYK is an illusion. When you enter CMYK, the operating system converts that to RGB and stores it that way. The mapping of RGB onto CMYK and back is not one-to-one, (for every point in RGB space, there is more than one point in CMYK space) so it looses something in translation if you circle round and back. When you print to a color printer like an Epson, Canon or HP ink jet, that information is sent from the OS to the printer as RGB values, and it’s up to the printer driver to decide how much of each, proprietary ink is needed. This is true of almost all color applications on both operating systems, not just SketchUp. A few color managed applications like most of Adobe’s professional software really do handle CMYK, but the rest of us should just forget about it an always work with RGB values.
Totally makes sense. I work in print, and also in multimedia, so this isn’t a surprise. Oftentimes, the colors I use in my models are supposed to match a CMYK value, and it’s simply a color space I am very comfortable in. Considering that this isn’t a real “issue” I’ll carry on 
Now, if only I could figure out the issue with the materials duplicating on me! I’ll try @Forestr suggestion to reinstall, as a last resort.
Didn’t someone else bring up this duplicating material issue before? I think I’ve seen it too.
I think the doubling of materials has been reported before on Mac but I don’t remember seeing an explanation or workaround.
I know it was reported in combination of our beloved render-extension.
And this thread:
The workaround being to purge frequently and to ping @Barry
Interesting. Not exactly the same issue I’m experiencing, but close. Purging does nothing to help unfortunately, since some faces have the original material and others take on the duplicate. @Barry is there a solution you know of?
After a full uninstall and reinstall, the issue of duplicating materials persists. If anyone thinks there is a possibility of an issue within my model, I’m happy to post it here for review. I would love to know if the issue is happening on other’s machines or just mine, in order to narrow down the culprit.
There are a few issues here, one of which I have been planning on submitting a feature request for.
A common duplication occurs when you make a slight RGB adjustment to a color in a model that has already been saved and you are now working on the next version. You will see the same custom color name you created in 2 versions, the new version with an added number suffix (if you happen to leave some of the unedited custom color in the model).
If this is not the case with your model, maybe there is a further CMYK to RGB complication?
Even in RGB mode, color edits do not stick precisely, they modify by a point up or down in my experience (on Windows).
The other issue I have found with custom colors is that you can’t have 2 colors with the same RGB settings and different names (important in certain render situations - ex. if you need the same color with gloss and matt finish areas in a render).
All this seems to point to some kind of software issues with color, maybe there needs to be more detail to cover all eventualities?
That definitely is what happened, and what is happening. Interestingly, I can’t reproduce the issue on a new document, no matter how hard I try. Something must’ve happened to my model that’s causing this issue. I’ve attached it here. Perhaps someone can find out what is going on and provide a solution?
NRE conference rooms.skp (1.3 MB)
I am experiencing exactly the same problem in Sketchup Pro 2018.
The model I am working on is going to be used for renderings so any duplicates in the materials-tab could cause me errors. Did not have this problem before in older versions of Sketchup for Mac.
I’m still having this infuriating behavior, where my simple solid color materials are being duplicated unnecessarily, over and over again in my models. No solution proposed by anyone here has worked. Since my original post, I’ve got a new machine and we upgraded to SketchUp 2018, and the same models and same behavior keeps happening.
This is getting very frustrating, since I keep my models incredibly efficient and organized. Having multiple copies of the same color does nothing but complicate the situation.
Does anyone have any suggestions on why this issue is happening? No matter what I do I can’t seem to stop it, and it is definitely a bug.
does it happen with Twilight disabled?
I can’t reproduce the issues using your file from previous post…
the model is tagged by Twilight, so it may make copies of materials…
john
Yes, it happens with Twilight totally uninstalled. This is a fresh install of SketchUp on a fresh machine too. Driving me crazy because the behavior isn’t always consistent, and it doesn’t apply to all instances of where the materials exist.
I wish I could get on a video chat with someone to show them what’s happening and maybe get some sage input/advice that is specific.
