Look, I’ve always respected what SketchUp offers. It’s been a great tool. But let’s be honest—removing 70% of the starter materials, especially the ones we rely on for D5 Render, was a terrible move. These were essentials. People used them every day. And now? Sharp-edged thumbnails pointing straight at the users. That’s bad design. Bad energy. Anyone with basic feng shui knowledge knows it.
But here’s the thing—it’s not too late. Trimble can still fix this. Bring back the full material pack. Show your users you actually care about the people who use your platform daily to build, create, and design. We’re not asking for extras—we’re asking for what worked.
Make a file with what you want in 2024.
Save it somewhere you can find it easily.
Open 2025 - go to preferences and turn off the setting to automatically ‘upgrade’ the materials to the new settings.
Open your file.
Save as Template…
Thanks for the tip—veterans like us, we’ll find a way. We know how to build templates, tweak settings, and code around problems if we have to.
But what about new users? The ones just starting out? They launch SketchUp and are hit with sharp-cornered thumbnails, dull textures, and confusing defaults. It’s not a warm welcome—it’s more like: “Welcome to SketchUp… now go fix it yourself.”
That’s not what made this platform great. SketchUp used to be clean, intuitive, and inspiring. This new direction complicates things for the people who need simplicity most.
Let’s stop forcing people to work around a bad update—and just bring back what worked.
“Huge Mistake” is a bit harsh. Whilst I have yet to deal with the materials panel in anger I have to agree the cube isn’t ideal and a spherical representation would be a good alternative option.
The other aspect that I have yet to resolve is setting the proportions of the image. Previously I could easily look at an image in 2D and count the displayed units (bricks, tiles, slates etc) and adjust the image to correctly scale to match the product I want to use. Now that doesn’t seem to be possible without going back to the source image?
Perhaps SU could allow us to switch between preview styles e.g. cube, sphere & 2D?
Look, I get it — some people think calling it a “huge mistake” is harsh. But let me tell you — it is a huge mistake. It goes completely against what 3D design is about. We round corners. We soften. We make things smooth. And what do they do? They give us cubes with sharp corners pointing right at our faces. It’s the exact opposite. If we go right, they go left.
And let’s not ignore the practical side — you can’t even tell what the materials are anymore. That’s another fundamental being thrown out the window: visual clarity. So yes, I see this as more than just a design decision.
But here’s the real question: What’s the endgame? Is this about control? Are we heading toward a future where if you don’t use their rendering tools, you’re out of the game?
SketchUp was built by designers, for designers — not to funnel us into one locked system.
I agree. I never quite understood why Render-programs chose this design for a texture (or that silly ball). At least give us options of how to present the materials in the material browser. One could add a small icon, like a dot in the corner to the “HDR” Materials to show that they are different from the regular ones but I really do miss the flat representation of the materials.
So far we haven’t used that feature much, but that boils down to the simple fact that this is a solution to a problem that we didn’t have in our workflow because there are enough renderers out there. I like that we can add these new visuals directly into Layout though, so we will explore this eventually. Right now it’s ALOT of options when you edit a material that a regular user might be overwhelmed with - it might be nice to be able to tuck them away under “advanced”.
The balls are to give you an idea of how varying light will effect the material. If you look at the Poly Haven website it will show you how PBR materials should be be displayed.
I get that. It just never felt super useful to me, as most materials I work with are not very “ball-shaped” in the end. So it’s distorted woods and wasted screen space to my particular use-case. I will survive it, of course.
rather than looking to see what it looks like round think of it as showing you how gradient light would fall on it. Like sun through a window. or if you were looking at the surface from an angle.
Remember you can disable the auto generation of the cube materials on any old project.
Before opening an old project - go into Preferences. There is a toggle in there for the AI PBR stuff.
I flipped this switch, opened my 2024 template with all my commonly used materials, components, tags, then saved as a template in 2025. When I start a new project I have flat squares and my old materials. When I open old projects everything looks the same.
Looking at the help pages I get the impression that the intention is editing materials is a process involving the whole model.The cube is a starting point, but the whole model will react to your adjustments - live! In many ways this should deliver a better outcome than judging from a small blob in the material picker.
Regarding the 2D view, on macOS the “Edit texture image in external editor” defaults to opening in Preview for a quick unit count. Not sure about Windows though…
Those Sample materials (and components) were seriously outdated, though. Small resolution and not particularly good at tiling or looking very realistic. They date back to about when Microsoft office had Clipart.
You can still use them in new models…just copy the folder and add it as a library.
The cube int too bad, to me ; more useful than a sphere But how about a Face with a curved edge… Best of both worlds?..like the new SketchUp logo, perhaps?
I prefer to preview a material straight on, and editable like the classic browser. It also matters a lot if im using specific types of timber, hues of paint, or scaled blockwork…i dont want it to be lit or shaded when previewing .
Maybe the position of the cube should not be “isometric” but more asymmetric so one of the visible faces would be more “straight on”. The cube size doesn’t always seem to show the texture optimally.
I am not too negative about all the new stuff, but also see that the materials don’t really work for me like this. I can’t really see the materials anymore in these small cubes. The former flat squares were far better in that regard. Perhaps the old ones can be reinstated and clickable to pop up a cube or sphere?
Anyway, I will be looking into getting the old squares back.
I find that the isometric cube thumbnails are so small they are almost indistinguishable and actually don’t give me any sense of what the material will look like when applied to a model. The material name tells me more than the visual, whereas it should be the other way around!
Agreed. I just tried the wood floor thing. Impossible to know what happens until you apply it to a surface. Aha then: small fishbone old pattern, not what I wanted. This disturbs my workflow unnecessarily.
See here, how would one recognize what that wood floor looks like without applying it in their model? Bad design.
