Here it would seem that Sketchup actually sees Colors and Textures as Materials. So a “Color Material” is different from a “Texture Material”. The definition seems to make sense to my brain…but what about the Preferences panel? Shouldn’t that say “Colors” & “Textures” instead of “Texture Images” and “Materials”?
This wouldn’t be an exact definition, but a little explanation with my own words… (not a complete guide or definition)
The Material represents a texture or color that can be applied to Drawingelements (usually to faces). So generally you are applying a Material.
The material can be solid (color) , textured or colorized textured.
So the Material (.skm files) stored in the file location above is a ready made Material created (or you got it ready made) with an above mentioned methods: Apply only a color, or apply only a texture . Or apply a texture then change its color.
The texture itself already have its “own” “average color” which you can change when you are colorizing.
The textures (picture files: .jpeg, .png…) stored in a Texture Images folder. This is what you can use when you create a textured material. (Actualy “any” picture - from other locations as well - can be imported/converted as a texture)
So Materials is a folder for .skm’s. that makes a bit of sense to me now. Save materials, either colors or textures, that you want to reuse.
Texture Files is a folder for the image files that some .skm’s are based on or for images one would use without converting them to a material, say a piece of art to overlay on a tv screen. Not technically a Material. But it is lumped into Texture Files because one can apply it to a face.
