Bookmatched woodgrain
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How do I create bookmatched woodgrain? For example, I have side-by-side cabinet doors that have bookmatched (mirror image) grain. I have tried unsuccessfully to make a component of one door and flip the image along the red axis, which gives me the look, but I can't seem to work out how this texture is applied to the other door. I know there must be a simpler way than what I am doing. I have looked for this topic on the forum without success.
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Are you drawing the door as its five parts? (Panel, rails, and stiles) Or are you making a sort of representative door. In any case, make the door a component. Then copy and flip the component to make the counterpart door. Apply the material to the faces inside the component, not to the component wrapper. It should turn out something like this.
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Thank you. Don't know why I struggled with this initially, but I've got it going now.
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Hello, I am new to the forum.
I came across this post while looking for a way to create a new material from bookmatched images. I created a new material from the image of a small section of wood board (lemon tree). After creating a material with the small image, I created a bookmatched pattern by copying and flipping the image along the red and blue axes. The result was fine. However, when I created a new material with this larger pattern and applied it to a panel the result was a tiled image of my initial small pattern. Is there a way to create a new material with a bookmatched pattern?
Thanks for the help. -
Welcome Ron. When you import an image as a texture, you somehow need to define its size. That is, the length and width of the area is covers. If your "board" surface is larger than the texture, it will have to repeat and thus be tiled.
Did you somehow set the size of the texture image after you imported it into SketchUp? Maybe you just need to make it larger. How did you import the image into SketchUp? Could you share the image and/or a SketchUp file with it included as a texture?
FWIW, when I create wood grain materials I use images of entire boards. So that usually means it's between 8 and 14 feet long depending on the species and the tree. The widths are variable but usually between 6 and 12 inches. I'm also usually making 3 to 6 textures from the same log. When I import the images into SketchUp, I use File>Import and import them as textures. I apply them to rectangles drawn to the same length as the original board. The length is automatically set correctly and the width takes care of itself.
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Thanks Dave.
The sample I have is a small veneered board on which I applied a test finish. It is only 5" x 9". I would like to see how it appears on my model that has panels that are 12" by 24". I imported a photo of the small panel and set it on a 5" x 9" panel in Skp in order to keep the grain the right size. I then tried to replicate and flip the panel to create a larger bookmatched pattern. After the copying and flipping process I did get a nice bookmatched pattern but when I created a new unique texture from the larger pattern, the new texture appeared tiled instead of bookmatched when I applied it.
I may be asking for to much. I realize it would be easier to use a photo of a larger board to create the new texture but I won't have a large veneered panel until I start building the project. -
Exactly what steps did you take to do this: " After the copying and flipping process I did get a nice bookmatched pattern but when I created a new unique texture from the larger pattern, "?
And what was wrong with continuing your work with the nice bookmatched pattern? Why make a unique texture of it?
I may be missing something, but the only way I could see to make a bookmatched texture was to edit it with an image editor. Otherwise it seems to work fine just to flip a surface and join the two surfaces edge to edge, hide the edge.
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You need to use a different approach to show the bookmatch. I can think of two.
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Create the bookmatched image in your image editor and import the result.
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In SketchUp, divide the larger face into smaller sections. Then apply the material to the faces. You can then right click on one of them, choose Texture>Position and flip the texture to make the mirror version. You can hide the dividing edge so it isn't visible. Although I wasn't shooting for bookmatched textures for the top and shelf on this table, I used the same basic method. In this case I just picked different sections of the texture for the different "boards" in each component.
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Yes, a simple solution. I don't need to create a new texture, just subdivide the surfaces I want to cover, apply the texture to each section and flip the texture on each section as needed. Should have thought of that.
Thank you Dave and Pbacot. I've been working with Sketchup for several years for hobby woodworking and it's nice to know I can get help like this.
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