Google SketchUp: The Missing Manual

Applying Colors and Materials (Mac)

When you use the Face Style toolbar to change the look of your model, the changes you make apply to all of your model's faces. When you want to change the appearance of individual faces within your model, you change the color or materials of the face using the Paint Bucket tool and the Colors window.

Note

The tools for applying colors and materials are different on Macs and in Windows. This section covers the Mac tools. If you're of the Windows persuasion, go to Applying Colors and Materials (Windows).

1. Click the Shaded face style button, or choose View → Face Style → Shaded.

   Your model shows the base color for faces but doesn't show textures. If you haven't applied color or textures to any faces, you won't see much of a change at this point. (To get the full picture for this exercise, make sure the X-ray button is toggled off.)

2. Choose Window → Materials.

   In SketchUp 7 the Colors window appears as shown in Figure 6-12. (Oddly, the name on the window is "Colors" not "Materials", as it is in the menu.) You use this one window to select both colors and materials. At the top of the window five buttons display different panels where you can choose colors or materials.

   Note

   The color and materials tools for Macs and Windows are different for a reason. The Mac version of SketchUp uses the Mac's accelerated graphics hardware. It also makes use of the Apple color system. The Color Picker in SketchUp extends Apple's version to include textures and SketchUp materials. ...