Today I'm gonna show you some tips and tricks for Sketchup Materials

and also some basics of Vray Materials.

Here's a list of what I'm going to cover in this video,

I will also provide timestamps for each section in the description box below,

so you can skip to any section you want.

With that said,

Let's get started

Number One, Applying materials

To start applying materials,

you need to use the Paint Bucket tool.

Now if you're new to Sketchup,

your setup might look a little different from mine

You might have the tools in different places,

but don't worry about that.

Just look for this icon,

or you can simply Press B for the Paint Bucket.

Your cursor will then change to a paint bucket,

and the materials window will pop up.

This window has a library of materials

that is included when you first installed Sketchup,

From here you can select whichever material you like

and click on a face or a group to paint it.

Number Two, Painting Groups/Components vs Faces

When you create a new element in Sketchup,

it will have a default material,

which is white for the front face,

and bluish purple for the back.

Painting a specific material to a face or faces will override that default material.

Also note that the default material can be selected here if needed.

When you have a group or component and you are painting it from the outside,

all of the faces assigned with the default material will change.

However if you edit it,

you can change the material of a specific face within that group.

Now if you exit the edit mode,

you can still change the group's default material

but any faces that are not assigned the default material will stay the way it is.

I've mentioned groups and components,

so what's the difference between them?

Well, I'm going to explain this by telling you a story

This is Steve

and his twin brother Jeff

my name Jeff

and their last name is Green.

And this is Bryan

and his twin brother Blake

Cooper

The difference between these two families is that the Coopers are telepathic.

Even though Steve and Jeff are pretty tight bros,

they don't have that connection.

So when Steve changes his shirt,

Jeff DOESN'T do the same.

But on the other hand, Bryan and Blake have that super power

so they know what each other are thinking,

so when Blake changes his shirt,

Bryan does the same,

now They have a connection

Since The Greens are groups,

and the Coopers are components.

This means that making changes to a group will NOT affect its copies.

On the other hand,

any changes you make INSIDE a component will affect all other instances of that component

However, any changes outside of it will not affect its copies.

In some cases, you want to create unique copies of a component

and stop it from linking to the original.

If so then you can select the one that you'd like to make unique,

right click it, then click Make Unique.

Now you can edit this component without affecting the original or vice versa.

This also works on multiple copies of that component.

For instance, I can make these two cars Unique,

so that they still link to each other, but not to the originals.

Number Three, Creating a material

To create a new material, first bring up the material window,

then click on this icon right here.

When you click this icon, a new window will pop up,

and you can choose a color using the Color Picker here.

If you want to use a texture, then check this box,

now you can locate and select the texture that you want to use.

You can also change the width and height of the texture here.

And the opacity of it here.

Number Four, Editing a Material

You can edit any existing material in the model by first selecting the material that you want to change,

and then go to edit mode.

Like the creating material window,

his has the same options where you can choose the color, texture,

and change its width, height and opacity to whatever you like.

The only differences between the edit mode and create mode are these two buttons right here.

One lets you sample the color on an object,

and the other lets you sample any color on screen.

So if I want these windows to have this green background color or this sky blue color for example,

then I can easily do so by using the two buttons.

Number Five, Importing Sketchup Materials

If you don't want to deal with sketchup's crappy default materials,

then here are some ways to import your own materials.

In a sense, Importing materials is a faster way of creating material

Method number one: The Import

First, Go to file, Import

Then select the texture/material that you want

Next, left Click on a corner of a surface to pick the anchor point

and Move the mouse to size it,

Finally, left click again to finish

Method number two: The Drag and drop

If you drag and drop a texture into Sketchup, it will come in as an image.

What this means is that you cannot do anything to it except move, scale, and rotate it.

See how I'm trying to sample the paint but Sketchup doesn't let me.

If you want to use it as a texture,

then just right click, explode,

and now you can sample and use it to paint your geometries.

Method number three: The Copy and paste

Another way is to copy and paste a geometry With the material from another model

For example I have a reference model on the left side,

and my new model on the right.

I can simply copy and paste the geometry with the material I want from one window to another

And now I can sample paint from there.

Number Six, Importing Vray Materials

To import Vray materials to sketchup;

first, press the M button on the Vray Toolbar to bring up Vray Material Editor.

Note that the Vray toolbar can be found here if it is not on your setup already.

Once you have the material editor opened,

Right click the Scene Materials,

Load material

and just locate and select vismats or vrmats files.

Once done, just select the material from the list and start painting away.

If you select the material and click here,

you can preview how the material will look once it's rendered

I'm going to bring up the paint bucket and test it out.

Well that's odd

it shows up black on the model space but it looks fine once rendered.

This is actually a small glitch that happens sometimes when Vray cannot locate the source of the texture.

If you just reload the texture file like so,

it will show up correctly in Sketchup.

Also, if you want to create your own Vray materials,

then this window is where you can do that.

I am not going to go over it today,

because that's a lengthy subject.

Also there are so many resources out there where you can get free vray materials.

Why spend time making something when you can just get it for free

Number Seven, Materials Resources

Speaking of free stuff,

here are some resources for Sketchup and Vray Materials.

You can pause the video right now and check them out

or go to the links in the description box below

We're more than half way through the video so I'm gonna get some water,

meanwhile, enjoy this time-lapse!

Welcome back!

Number Eight, Applying materials to Curved surfaces

Applying a texture to a curved surface is a little trickier than it is to a normal surface

Curved surfaces in sketchup are composed of many straight surfaces.

What does that mean?

For example, when you draw a circle,

you can actually see that it's made of many smaller segments.

So when it's extruded the circle becomes a cylinder that is made of smaller faces.

That's why sometimes when you import a 3D model to sketchup,

it might have a ton of unnecessary lines

which make it difficult and time-consuming to apply material to the object.

Not only that, it might affect the final results once rendered.

If you want to apply material to curved faces with hard edges like this,

you can first select all of the geometries

right click, soften edges, adjust the values a little,

and now you have a cleaner object that you can easily apply material to.

Number Nine, Repositioning Textures

Sometimes when you import or paint a texture,

it might not be at the right size or in the position that you want,

here's how to resize and reposition it.

Click on the face of the texture that you want to edit,

right click and go to Texture->Position.

Here, you will see 4 different pins.

Click on a pin to lift and reposition it.

Click and DRAG a pin will transform the texture in different ways.