Texture change in Google Earth

twharvey

I made a model (Old House, Hereford collection) with several materials. When the model is viewed in 3D Warehouse it looks fine. It can be downloaded to SU with no problem. However, when you view it in Google Earth, one of the faces has acquired a different material. The switch is to one of the other materials in the model. How do I prevent this from happening?

linea

I have had this same problem, I'm not sure if this is correct info across the board but I've had results by correcting the following aspects;

Basic errors like you might have two faces on top of each other
You need to optimise your model for GE - look on the Google Earth homepage under "Modelling for Google Earth".
There are too many textures in your model for GE to deal with.
Try exporting as a KMZ and viewing that in GE instead of the sketchup model - it fixed all my problems, this and optimising.

twharvey

Thanks, Jon. I checked for double faces: no. There are 40 textures in the model; I've done others with a lot more than this. The model is pretty well optimized. Interestingly, there are two faces with the same texture. Both of them have the same problem. The names of the two textures are similar: one is "Front Eliv 2" the other is "Front Eliv 4".

I exported the .KMZ model, but I can't figure out how to view it in GE.

Cheers,
Tom

Gaieus

Tom,

Most probably your system associates kmz files with GE. Just double click on it and it will be launched in GE.
You could also paste the URL of your WareHouse model so that we can have a look. Also try to rename your texture files with no spaces in the names (I know GE does not handle non-English characters for instance - I don't know about spaces though).

twharvey

Gaieus,
It was the blanks in the names of textures. I changed the names to ones with no blanks and it woks OK.

Thanks for your help.
Tom

Gaieus

Ah, good, thanks for reporting back.
That was just a clue but now it's good to remember, too.