I’m a custom furniture designer/fabricator. I have been trying to level up my client proposals, so I have been trying to add watercolor textures to some of the images in the proposals.
I have had a lot of success with my process, along with a few challenges.
Here is where I am at so far.
I created a watercolor texture in photoshop and imported it into SketchUp.
I painted the surfaces I wanted to have the effect,
Then made that texture unique.
Then right, click and choose the option to edit texture image, which opens it back in photoshop.
This is where my 1st challenge comes in.
I can do basic edits in photoshop and click save; it will then auto-update the Sketchup file. I think this is done because it is linked through the temp files on a PC. (I have no idea about Mac)
Unfortunately, if I want to do more advanced layers in photoshop, it prevents the file from being saved in the temp folder under the same name and breaks the link. I don’t have a way to tell what the original name of the temp file was, as there are a lot of files in that folder, and they are assigned crazy letters and numbers as file names which seem to change each time you save.
I wonder if anyone has any workaround in Sketchup or Photoshop to keep them linked when doing more advanced techniques.
To keep reimporting the texture after each edit in photoshop to see how it looks in the model is not an efficient workflow.
Another challenge I am having
To try to break the hardlines and edges so it is more like a watercolor painting, I started experimenting with some different styles created in Style Builder. They look great in Sketchup; however, when I sent them to Layout, they looked terrible as a raster.
When I switched from raster to hybrid, the desired line weight effect disappeared.
Layout still has the style selected as active, but none of the line effects show in the viewport.
I can somewhat overcome the jagged raster by exporting at maximum. However, it is still not as good looking as it is in the SketchUp file, and exporting at max exports all viewports in the Layout file at max, generating a huge file that I can not justify sending to a client’s email.
So if anyone has any tips or workarounds to create the effect in Layout, I would be grateful.
Just for fun, I have been designing a house even though I’m a furniture designer. I tried using the same watercolor technique for the grass and stucco on the house. I watercolored the windows with some transparency so you can see the furniture inside.
Woodgrain has proven to be a little tougher to look good as a sketch with watercolor texture. The wood floor is a texture that I painted over in photoshop to create shadows. I’m pretty dissatisfied with the woodgrain on the furniture, but I need a bit more practice for another day to see if I can get a closer look at what I envision.
