Need Help with .skm Files

BSquared18

Hi,

I would like to create more wood-texture files than ship with SketchUp. I see that the ones with SU are .skm files. My understanding is that making a .skm file requires some special handling.

I've also looked at lists of links to tileable textures, found elsewhere in this forum.

My question is: Are there any galleries that contain texture .skm files that can simply be placed in the same folder as the .skm files that came with SU? If so, could someone provide link(s)?

If not, is there a tutorial somewhere that goes through the process of making a .skm file?

Any other information about how .skm files work, whether they are necessary for what I want, etc. would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Bill

Dave R

Bill, I did this showing how I do it. In my opinion, worrying about making SKM files is over blown. SketchUp will create the SKM file when you import an image as a texture and the SKMs will be added to your local library when you save them there.

The process of saving the materials for later use is a little different on the Mac but actually creating them in the first place is the same.

One thing that I seem to do differently than a lot of folks is I am intentional about how large the material is when it is created as such in SketchUp. It seems a lot of the tutorials I find talk about editing the material after it is imported. Certainly that is an option but I find it makes more sense to define how large the material is to be by correctly sizing the surface on which the image is applied.

Another thing that is different in my approach to wood grain materials is I'm after realistic-looking grain. Trees don't make tileable textures. If I want seamless, I'll use plastic but I fully expect seams between pieces of wood. I don't want to see the same flame or knot repeated a bunch of times down the length of the board, either. For that reason the common little square texture images are of no interest to me. I only use images of whole planks for my wood grain materials.

BSquared18

Thanks, Dave. That's helpful.

I like the idea of just importing an image as texture and working with that. I've done that before using the projection technique for texturing curved surfaces. It works with flat surfaces too.

Bill

sfto1

Dave,

How did you get nine foot long images of the hickory boards? or any boards for that matter?

Well done tut you referenced.

Dave R

Thank you.

How did I get nine foot long images? Well, I started with nine foot long boards.