Best way to improve textures/materials??

[Kent L]

I've been using the materials library extension that comes from the Sketchup website, but I have a lot of trouble with the materials creating repeating patterns that look ugly on larger projects that are to scale. (soil and grass materials especially)

What is the best way to overcome that artificial look?

Are there some good free materials out there for Sketchup??

[Alan Fraser]

To avoid ugly repetitive repeating patterns on larger surfaces you really need source images that are much bigger than the materials that come as default or freebies on the SU website. Bigger in the sense of covering a wider area before they begin to repeat.
For brick, I'd suggest downloading the Acme brick/masonry designer, which can generate large areas of brick.
http://www.brick.com/md/index.htm

This can enable you to produce very large areas of brickwork like this , but you may need to edit the edges slightly to make it completely seamless.

For ground cover and other irregular surfaces, one of the best investments is ImageSynth from the makers of Modo. This will allow you to grab a few different images from the web and subtlely blend them to produce original textures of any size. If you don't want to cough up any money, you can still do the same thing in Photoshop or similar by careful use of the clone and healing brushes.
http://www.luxology.com/whatismodo/imageSynth.aspx

There is a list of free, ready-made resources in the Components and Materials forum.

[Anssi]

Note that the maximum texture image size allowed by SU is 1024 x 1024 pixels. Anything larger than that gets downsized, and often not very beautifully.

Anssi

[ridix]

One can hand make texture as suggested, but it is not a simple process. I worked on large brickwork image once and found that brick line never line up. After all, real brick wall are laid by hand, and never straight! When making photo of a given texture it must have equal illumination all over. This is hard to get in real life.

[Kent L]

These suggestions are great! Checking them out now.

[Chris Fullmer]

I've never seen a good explanation for how to remove a lightsource like that. I want to try that out. Thanks modelhead,

Chris