Google SketchUp Cookbook

Chapter 8. Painting, Materials, and Textures

At first glance, materials seem a simple feature of SketchUp: Click the Paint Bucket icon, choose a material from the resulting window, and click a face to apply your choice—even a second-grader can do it. But SketchUp materials have capabilities far beyond simply applying paint to faces. For instance, there are shortcuts to painting multiple faces at a time, you can edit a material’s size and color, and you can make changes to a material on just one specific face. In this chapter, you will learn about the more complex aspects of materials, such as editing, positioning, translucency, and alpha transparency.

8.1. Finding Materials and Images

Problem

You want to find materials or images to use in your models.

Solution

Look in the Materials (or Colors) window for local materials, and then search on the SketchUp website or in the 3D Warehouse for additional materials.

Discussion

The Materials window (called Colors on the Mac) houses the folders of materials currently on your system. To access it, choose Tools→Paint Bucket, or click the Paint Bucket icon, or choose Window→Materials. Within the Materials window, you can find all colors and materials used in a particular model in the In Model folder (the Colors In Model folder on the Mac). To open this folder, you can use the drop-down menu or click the house icon (Figure 8-1). Windows permits you to edit materials found in the In Model folder only; no matter what your system, it is the best practice ...