Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Architectural Design with SketchUp
Figure 5.63: Light intensity analysis in the LightUp rendering software
Materials
Much of the realism of a good rendering comes from using good-quality materials.
In this section, we’ll review various material types and how to set them up in
your rendering software.
Fortunately for us, SketchUp already comes with a good array of materials—from
simple colors to photorealistic repeating textures and even transparent materials.
You can find them all in the Materials window (see Figure 5.64).
These materials work well in many situations. They are all seamlessly repeating
textures, which allows their file size to be small and efficient. The main problems
with them are related to close-up renderings, where it becomes obvious that the
images have quite low resolution, and in some cases repeating patterns that make
the textures look artificial. You can see both problems in Figure 5.65. In most
other cases—especially when the view of the textured object is from a certain
Figure 5.64: The SketchUp materials
distance—the quality of the materials is sufficient for a good rendering.
window
Depending on the quality that your rendering is supposed to have, you will
always need to choose among using SketchUp’s materials, the materials your rendering
software provides (if available), and making your own from scratch (e.g., from photographs).
When you do this, you can vary these parameters:
NN
NN
Texture image quality—A smaller texture image size often means more efficient rendering
times (and a more responsive SketchUp display). For close-ups or large-size renderings,
however, it is important that texture size is large enough to bring out detail.
Tiled versus single texture image—Tiled, or repeating, textures (such as SketchUp’s
materials) are efficient because a small image can fill a large area simply by repeating itself.
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