Hi all, I am pretty new to Sketchup Pro and use it mainly for DIY projects at home. I have watched a few of the tutorials which were very handy and a great source to go back to for more information as my ability grows.
Question;
At the minute i am using Sketchup to help design and layout small marquetry pieces, but i find the choices of wood types in the Materials tab quite limited. Is there an extension of add on for other wood types such as Walnut Burl, Olive Ash Burl or Ebony for example.
This would help me view a possible finished piece.
Have a look at the 3D Warehouse for wood textures. You can download collections that might do the job for you. Typically those textures will be small square images that necessarily repeat but for your use they may still be adequate.
You can also add your own materials if you wish. I use photos of boards to create wood textures. In my case Iâm usually dealing with larger pieces of furniture and so I will use images of boards that are between 6 and 14 feet long. This allows me to pick and choose different parts of the texture much like you would choose different parts of the real boards.
Here is an example of the sort of thing Iâm referring to.
Daveâs suggestion may be better if you want to try out a bunch of different materials. But, be sure to purge the components and materials you decide not to use. Otherwise, theyâll end up bloating your model.
You can also try a browser search for âwood texture imagesâ and youâll get a lot of potential image sources, many high definition (possibly TOO high definition - keep your texture pixel count as low as possible).
And quite a range are free.
Import the image onto a face in your model the right size to scale the image properly. That will make a texture in the Materials window.
Sometimes, you also need to add the words âseamlessâ. Suppose you are texturing the floor or wall or a large surface and you need the material to be âtilingâ - I forgot the proper term for it - where the image repeats itself in a uniformed tile. You wouldnât want to very clearly see a sharp line where the image repeats. âSeamlessâ removes that line and the borders of the image matches that of the opposite edge.
But not having a seamless image will also work fine.
Seamless is a good word, but I think that many web sites that have textures will have a Tile category, and generally they mean seamless, even if they donât use the word.
Lousy wood grain image. It doesnât cover a large enough portion of a board for the application so it must necessarily repeat. And it looks like it is scaled up too much for what it displays. Not at all realistic. Use a proper material image that is suitable for the application. the textures on this bench are made from images of full length boards 8 feet and longer. Multiple wide boards from the same log. No repetition down the length of the face.
Nice, but whereâd you get them from? The texture for boards? You take your own photos of your own boards?
And, yes, itâs a lousy wood grain image - I found the worst I could on Google
Care to share how I do it? I take evenly lit photos of large boards and crop them so the wood grain runs out to edges of the image rectangle. Then I use Import to import the images as textures and apply them to rectangles the same size as the âboardâ they represent. I usually have between three and eight images of boards from a single log so I will make a set of textures with them. Since Iâm using a desktop version of SketchUp I save the textures into a local collection by species.
Many thanks Dave, pretty much what I do too - I just thought there might be a better Dave way, as there seems to be in all aspects of this program!
Your posts, fixes, techniques and in-sights, along with the Aaronâs Square one and Skill Builder demos and the online tutorials have all helped me improve my workflow and skills to progress so that I can do much more than when I first started to use the program. I only found out about SU having watched Steve Ramseyâs Woodworking for Mere Mortals series on You Tube where he showed how to use it for making project plans.
By way of an example of my improvement, 3 months ago I was modelling my floor space in my workshop and tried to mock up all my tools and downloaded a lot from the 3D warehouse. Most of them were fair approximations of mine but over time I thought Iâd have a go at building my own.
I have a Bosch table saw and portable stand and thought Iâd start with the stand. Here is the stand from Boschâs site;
This was my first attempt 3 months ago which I was more than pleased with then as it was correctly sized and gave a good idea of what it was meant to be.
Having been happy with my kids crayon drawing I decided it really was awful and needed upgrading. After practicing this is what I drew in a couple of hours last night.
ive bee reading through your posts and you all have give me some great advice ad techniques to try ad think about. Maybe as my learning ad experience grows i will be getting somewhere near your standard
In the meantime, Thanks very much good food for thought.
