Question about UV mapping bark onto tree trunk

[IntelCoreDuo]

I'm trying to UV map bark onto a tre. It is important that the direction of the mark matches the direction of the branch.

Native Sketchup only lets me map straight up/down, with works with a straight trunks but looks ridiculous for branches.

• SketchUV tube map is ideal, but unfortunately only works with quad mesh.
• Cylindrical map works in some situations (B) but is a lot of work and works only with straight branches.
• Turning a branch into a group changing axis direction to match branch works (c) but is tricky to pull off and the correctly applied UV disappears if i explode the branch group.

Any clever ideas to do this more efficiently? (I'm applying bark to many dozens of tree models)

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[numerobis]

ThruPaint?