Hello! I am trying to applying a striped pattern to an ottoman I got from 3D warehouse and it’s a nightmare. If I set the texture to projected it looks great everywhere except it’s super skewed on the sides. If I don’t set it to projected my stripes get ruined and look more like bad zebra stripes.
I can’t be the only person who has this problem. Does anyone have tips and tricks for this particular problem? Or just applying patterned textures to surfaces that are not flat?
It should look skewed or compressed on the sides if you’re using a projected texture. The idea of a projected texture is that it is projected onto the faces from a specific angle.
Share the .skp file so we can see exactly what you’ve got to work with.
I do realize that about projected textures but it just means I can’t get the effect I am hoping for. Maybe it’s just not possible. Sketchup file attached.
textures-are-hard.skp (4.0 MB)
Is this better?
I don’t have a lot of time to spend on it right now but theres a lot of unneeded triangulation in your model that is working against you when it comes to applying materials. This is such a simple object, you could create a nicer one to apply textures two without all the triangulation. You could also make a much lighter component of it so it doesn’t add so much to your model file.
textures-arent-hard.skp (2.6 MB)
WOW! Thank you! Truthfully what you are saying is a bit over my head but at least I know what to go google. In looking at the file and reading your comments I am not exactly sure what you did. Is that the exact same object that I downloaded from 3D warehouse? Or did you remake it from scratch? Did you use a polygon reducer extension or anything like that?
I am asking because I did try to apply the texture only to just one side but I was unable to select each side individually. So I gave up, kept the top and remade the bottom as a rectangle with rounded corners. But I don’t love that because it doesn’t look as real or natural as an ottoman in real life would. Was the problem that I was applying it to the container and if so, how can I tell when I’ve got the container versus the face?
I am a sketchup n00b. I just started this year and textures is the thing I struggle with most.
I used an extension called CleanUp3 to merge coplanar faces. If I needed a piece of furniture like this I would make a much simpler model with the base part being a simple box with rounded corners. There doesn’t seem to be any need for more detail than that. I’d make the cushion with a flat top, too.
Consider how the piece will be viewed in the larger model. If this ottoman is the focus of your model then adding more detail makes sense. Otherwise the added detail isn’t really going to clarify what you are trying to communicate.
Part of your problem was that. You can tell what you have selected by how the thing looks. Solid blue bounding box? That’s a group or component. Also keep Entity Info open. It’ll tall you what you have selected.
I’ve done this a lot on simple objects…rather than go through the hassle of exporting the mesh to a third party software to UV map it correctly, or using one of several UV plugins that are available for SU.
My usual approach is to project the material onto a small plane, then group it and copy/rotate it into at least the 3 orientations you need for the model. I’ve done a diagonal in the image, because of the bevel.
After that, it’s simply a question of sampling the appropriate face on the gizmo and painting it onto the mesh.
The cylinder is treated differently. A single face is painted (unprojected) then you sample that face and paint it onto the adjacent face. You keep doing this, one face at a time all the way round. This will not likely be a perfect UV 1x map, so you’ll likely get a join at some point, when you paint the last face. Just make sure it’s somewhere that doesn’t matter.
You could use the same technique for the ottoman or a chair with more rounded edges than just bevels.
