Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Chapter 5 Rendering in SketchUp
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Next, look at large-area (in relation to the image size) objects, such as a wall or floor, and
add appropriate properties such as reflection and bump. If you notice when doing a lowquality
test render that adding these properties has no effect on the final result, undo
especially the reflection properties, because your scene will render faster without them.
Then focus on your key objects. Do you have a “showcase” object such as a kitchen
countertop or a piece of furniture located close to the observer? Adjust its properties
accordingly. If this object is made of glass, try a physically accurate glass material and
see if its appearance improves. This will likely increase rendering time, but for the added
realism it may be worth it.
Finally, see if you need to manually adjust any of the material textures. In SketchUp, you
can export a material’s texture for editing in an image editor. This is useful if you need
to add “edge dirt” (e.g., at the base of a wall) or fix tiling problems by making textures
appear more random.
Tweaking Texture Positioning
One of SketchUp’s best features is its ability to easily place textures from various sources and
position them. As you have seen in this chapter, you can add textures using the Materials
window or by importing images and placing them on faces as textures. Beyond these methods,
you can also model using the photo-matching technique (which will not be covered in
this book—if you are interested, you can find information in SketchUp’s help system).
Once you have a texture for a particular object, it is important to get its positioning right.
Fortunately, SketchUp offers tools to help with most common situations. Beyond those, we
can use plugins. The following examples showcase techniques for this.
Example 5.2: A Wooden Tabletop
This example is relevant for any situation where a texture should extend from one face to
other faces—be they in the same plane or not. We will use a positioned texture as reference
and “paint” it onto other faces.
1. Let’s assume that we need to place a texture of a slatted wooden board correctly on this
4f × 4f panel with a 2g thickness. To be able to place the texture, this object must not
be grouped. If it were, we would have to double-click it and enter group (or component)
editing mode. All surfaces have to be selectable.
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