Textures split into thousands

chedda

I have a model of some books which i am testing for a friend before it is sold on turbosquid. I finally got it into sketchup successfully mapped using the collada format exported from maya where it was created. 10 large texture maps are used for a lot of books maybe 50+. When i try and render the scene i literally get thousands of textures i think one for each face rather than the original 10 which show fine in the colour picker window. Sketchup crashes on export i think because of the sheer number of textures it has created. I remember seeing something similar a long time ago here but i can't find it. Can someone help ?

Gaieus

When materials are distorted, SketchUp tends to export them in little pieces. Try to triangulate faces before exporting (the export mechanism will triangulate them anyway).

Here is a plugin: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=20347

Edit: In this tutorial, where I obviously work with distorted materials, there are some notes on triangulation: http://sketchucation.com/resources/tutorials/36-intermediate/26-texturing-an-arch-2

TIG

You could indeed try to triangulate the faces into facets before exporting the objects...

When a texture is very distorted in its UVmapping it cannot be represented by the usual three vertices used in many exported formats - it needs a fourth vertex, but since many exported formats need triangulated facets [three-vertices] then such materials are exported as a separate 'distorted' image-file, used just for that facet: that image-file texture can them be UVmapped to replicate that SKP's facet's distortion in the exported file format, this time using the available three-vertices...
This can indeed result in many variants of the same texture.
Can you reapply these textures with no distortion [any scale/rotate/etc should be mappable with the three-vertices, it's just serious skewing/distortion/perspective-ization etc that causes this]

chedda

Thanks Guys, i hope it works i installed the triangulate plugin and it's been running a couple of hours ! I guess now i should have done it in batches. Sketchup is pathetically slow on these sort of commands especially explode, group etc. My last job seen in the gallery section was 149 MB and the file was excruciatingly slow to open, close work on etc. Would being 64 bit make it more stable and faster on these sort of executions ?

Gaieus

Well, in any case, I would try the method (and whether it solves the problem) on some much simpler geometry first.

Hours!?

chedda

Yes hours i am starting to think it is just hanging now. I wonder if the plugin has a limit to the amount of geometry it can process ?

chedda

Okay i aborted that try. Instead i triangulated each book individually over 100 ! Still no joy 10 textures become 4000 ARGHHHHHH SATAN NO !