Sizes Dimensions and Resolution of Materials

rdluther

Alright so I have taken photos of my materials and want to create a series of materials but I am not sure how big is too big and how small is too small. What are good sizes for materials for sketchup and for modeling programs? should I do high res images for close ups and low res for distant shots, if so what should the sizes and resolutions be for each of these? Finally when I make it a sketchup material should I scale the image to the exact size that the tile or material (ie make a 24" x 24" surface and scale the material photo so it is covered by 6 - 4" tiles over the 24") and then save the material or does it matter?

Thanks

Gaieus

Hi Bob,

The other day I also ahd a similar question over a render forum and Miguel ("Ecuadorian") gave the very logical answer to me regarding pixel counts of material images:

@unknownuser said:

Textures should have more resolution than the one they'll have in the final render, so they are never upscaled.
So, if, say, your texture will occupy about 300 x 300 pixels in your rendered image, the texture file should have more than that; 480x480 would be OK. You have to consider tiling, of course. If you have a textured wall that will take up 1000 pixels wide in your final image, but the texture will repeat four times in this width, each individual instance of the texture will be 250px wide, you should be fine with a texture file with a width of 320 pixels. By the same reasoning, it's pointless to use textures with more resolution than your final render, unless they're going to cover big areas and you'll only be focusing on a portion of it, as is the case with spherical skies.

Now, you should only worry about this with high contrast or high detail textures; textures with soft gradients usually upscale well. In all cases, be sure to save your textures as maximum quality JPGs.

Now as for a tiling image and its final, "physical" scale in SU - it always depends on the image itself. Better tiling images (say floor tiles) can have fewer tiles in a row if they are not varied but a brick or especially rough stone wall can look really ugly from a distance if the tiles are very apparent.

rdluther

thanks Gaieus that clarifies my question.

massimo

Hi Bob, you could also have a look at AdamB's interesting plugin.