I am a sketchup 2014 (free version) Mac user and I have found that when I project textures onto an object my file size increases by quite a few Mega Bytes. I find this only happens when I project a texture and not when I add a texture without projection.
For example if I have an object, lets say a cushion which is only 1MB and I add a texture that is 102KB, If I don’t use projection the file size will stay around 1MB. However if I project the texture onto the object then the file size will go from 1MB to 4MB or sometimes the increase can be more.
Is there anything I can do to prevent this.
Thank you in advance for any help and advice
I don’t know about how much encrease would be appropriate.
But I can imagine that with projected texture each fragment of a surface (many faces) has som additional information stored with the original texture. They all are streched/skewed differently.
How much that would add up to, I wouldn’t know.
Yes I have purged all materials and components. I guess I just find it a bit strange that a material that is only a few KB can increase my object size by double or more.
SketchUp supports texture deformations (like projection). Only some export formats do not support it and SketchUp bakes the deformation into the exported texture (and exports many textures). But I’m surprised that you notice a file size increase in .skp files.
A cushion with 1MB and without material must have a high polygon count. How many faces does it have?
When adding a texture to a model, not only the texture file is added, but also information about the position of the texture, for each face. This is normally a very little overhead, but I’m wondering if it could be bigger in this case. Is the cushion from 3D Warehouse?
I am inclined to reject the original assertion just based on experimentation. I repeated this same experiment in both SU8 and SU2014 with virtually identical results. File sizes were slightly larger overall in 2014, but the difference between using projected and non-projected texture was negligible in both cases.
In this experiment, the objects shown are the only objects in the model, which was purged and saved before each file size reading. Here’s the one done with 2014:
I don’t know what conclusion to reach except the OP is mistaken.
I think you might be right about the high polygon count. The objects I use in my models are usually downloaded from other sites and they originally are Obj or Fbx files which I then convert to 3Ds or DAE formats. I prefer to use high detailed objects so the poly count is usually quite high. For example one of the cushions I have in my model has 8960 faces.
I have tested this with an object downloaded from Sketchup Warehouse and have found that if the object is quite simple than the increase is minimal.
I found quite an increase in a Cussion shaped TIN as well with texture applied to it.
I created an example TIN, (19x38 squares > 2223 edges / 1444 faces), with the ‘From Scratch’ tool and used the ‘Smoove’ tool to shape it 3D, (to compare with Gully’s simple model, curved in only one way).
With just a flat ‘MAD’ image exploded to texture hovering over the TIN surface the file size was 343.40 KB.
With the texture projekted onto the surface the file size became 665.79 KB
With projected turned off the file size was even higher, 830.30 KB
Roughly double the original size in this case.
So a cushion of 1MB, curved more and two sides, contrary to the TIN I used, could possibly increase even more.
Makes you more aware of not just “dumping” others example models (say from 3D Warehouse) into your modeling space without cleaning them up right then, before continuing. Many of these models need further inspection to, for instance, get poly count down.
What an insane situation! I am making a batch of single flat rectangular objects each with a skin of a jpeg. The Jpegs are only around 2mb but for some reason, despite me doing ‘save as’ after each model the bloody software was clearly hanging on to data!! Ridiculous! What are you thinking Sketchup developers!
So within 20 ‘save as’, the file output Sketchup doc sizes had gone from 1.8mb for a 3D object, without any jpeg sin, with 354 faces to a single faced 4 sided flat object with a jpeg texture of original file size of 2mb with an output Sketchup doc size of 14mb!!! What Da F’ ?
So I didn’t realise until I was getting complaints from Sketchup about the jpeg format after making 30+ files, that my ‘save as’ out put file sizes were getting bigger and bigger and bigger !!! This is just nuts, there is no sense or logic about this.
My first step was to re-save all 58 jpegs I was using! with reduced dim’s incase Sketchup was uncompressing them for some bizarre reason!
Sketchup, this is a real pain in the ■■■■! Until I found Aerilius’s post had and will waste a couple of hours fixing these files. And the time I am using to write this to save others from this frustration.
Just a heads up for future reference.
When you get in someones face they get defensive and back away.
When you need help with an issue people respond quickly to straight forward questions with relevant information, screenshots and sample models.
I’m guessing from your last paragraph that you have done what you needed to do here so we wish you well and hope my advice will help you in your future elsewhere.
