Hey guys, thanks for the quick replies.

The eye dropper and paint bucket tool work very well but only on large areas. The problem is that in the border between the sand and grass in this model, there are several other smaller textures. I can't really figure out a good camera angle or way to make both models visible so I can quickly and accurately copy the textures over. I can sample one texture and tile a number of them but really the issue is when there are many small variations like with the border I described.

Can you think of a better workflow or have any ideas?

Here is the sketchup file. The created terrain is above. The original is down below and the tile sizes should be exact.

Thanks

texturequestion.skp

Hello.

I am in need of advice for a cruical step of a process. I am playing around with terrain that was divided by a BSP tree, meaning it has been subdivided for rendering. I am "undoing" this process by recreating it as it has created an insane amount of subdivisions. Have a look:

http://imgur.com/RsRgtvK

First, I determine the size of the original terrain tiles. Then I use the amazing "Drop Vertices" plugin. Now for the final piece of the puzzle, I would a like a quick way to grab the textures for each "tile" by raycasting down and then applying the texture of the polygon it intersects. I can of course do it by hand, but I have a lot of these and want to try to automate it as best as possible.

Firstly, are there any scripts that do something like this? Secondly, if not, is there a good example that will get me going where I need?

I am a programmer by profession so digging into Ruby shouldn't be impossible but if there is some script that does this already (or someone I can hire to write it), that would be better. Seriously happy to pay someone for their time.

Thank you.

Here are pictures that illustrate what I mean.

It needs to apply the texture from the bottom to the top.

Thank you for your time.

That's exactly what I needed. Thanks!

I will definitely try the script, too. Thank you both.

There seem to be a lot of old threads about this without any great answers.

I create a box with unit size 1, 1, 1. I put it at the origin.
Now I make a copy of that box and move it to another point in 3d space.

How can I find the position of that box? If that doesn't make sense given that a box is made up of different vertices, how can I find the position of those vertices? Which tool lets me see the world vertex position? What if I make it a component? How do I see the position of the component?

These seem like simple things to do but I can't find a way. They are instrumental in level design and accuracy.

Thank you

oganocali, this is exactly what I mean. Where the transform is stored with a reference rather than the vertices in world position. What is the term for this? Component? Group? How do I add additional model instances?

Furthermore, I will be exporting them as .obj so I think the main world geometry will be in one export and then I'll have to find a way to export the instances. Does sketchup support any way of exporting a list with the model name and its translation, rotation and scaling? I'm a programmer so if I have to dig into the ruby stuff I can.

The game engine I'm loading these into was written by me so as long as I can export an instance list even in plaintext, I can utilize it.

Thanks a bunch!

Hi.

I have been using Sketchup for 3d development quite nicely but have hit a wall I am hoping you can help me overcome. In the worlds I am designing, I have the main terrain and level geometry. Then I have hundreds of objects which add variation. My problem is that for a lot of these objects, the models are the same. I would rather not create 100 instances of a trees with world coordinate vertices when I can just say there is a tree at 100.0f, 100.0f, 100.0f.

I am wondering if Sketchup supports this. Furthermore, I am wondering if it's possible to export the information about the objects.

Just to clarify, imagine I have a desert with trees. The desert terrain should be in the export but the trees should be instances, that is, there is a model references an, x, y, and z translation, scale and rotation, rather than the vertices in world coordinates.

Is this possible?

@pilou said:

Why modify the geometry if there is no problem with the texture ?

Thrupaint by Fredo is your friend!

PS Please the next time put the file around the origin and not anywhere in the 3D space!
And save as V6 for a more large audiance!

[attachment=0:77xjvmqc]<!-- ia0 -->thrupaint.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:77xjvmqc]

Thank you. But again, my main issue here is about reducing the amount of unnecessary triangles to speed up rendering. With the current model there are potentially 25%+ extra polygons. I am looking to reduce every "square" of terrain to simply two polygons as that was the way the original model was. I want it to merge these coplanar faces.

@cotty said:

I don't see a texture in that example?

I removed the texture so I wouldn't have to upload a huge file. But the texture isn't super related. It's mainly the geometry.

Thanks all! Both solutions worked but the drop vertices was very speedy. Thanks!

Hi all. You guys helped me greatly with my other thread. I though I would try once more with this other issue.

I am trying to simplify the geometry of an older Quake era game format. The format was initially very simple but then it was divided by a BSP tree for quicker rendering. What I am attempting to do is "undo" the work of the BSP division.

Take a normal looking terrain scene:

This terrain was recreated by using Drop Vertices with the same size grid over the BSP terrain. It's exactly as it would have looked before division.

Here is it post division:

My goal is to get this back to the original state. The reason I don't just use the drop vertices method is because the model has a lot of texture info that if I can preserve, I would like to.

The problem I am having is that when using merge coplanar faces with the CleanUp3, it doesn't seem to merge a few of them even if they are on the same plane. I have poorly outlined in red the BSP divisions (i missed the highlighting of the vertical divisions) and then in blue, the subdivision of these polygons. As you can see they are still essentially quads subdivided into two triangles and then sometimes subdivided again by the BSP tree. Now, I am not sure why the merge coplanar faces doesn't patch these up. I can redraw them and verify that they are all on the same plane. I assumed the coplanar face merge would detect if they are all on the same plane, and the redraw them with the smallest amount of vertices.

I am really looking for an automated way of fixing this as there are a lot of maps like these. I have also uploaded a sample sketchup file.

Thank you so much for your help. This community is fantastic and the plugins you write are amazing.

sample.skp

Thanks for the response. My only question is whether the generated mesh will be able to be edited using the sandbox tools.

Hi all.

I am not quite sure of the exact terminology or if something like this even exists yet.

I have some old meshes from an old game format. The ones I am looking at are terrain meshes. They were cut by a BSP tree, and therefore, some of the grids are a bit overly complex. I have tried mergine coplanar faces and still, it doesn't fix everything. I want to fix this by recreating them with the sandbox feature.

Here is a test case I set up:

What I need to happen, is for the sandbox terrain at the top to take on the shape of the terrain at the bottom without creating additional vertices (other than the squared being divided to create 2 triangles). The algorithm would do something like every index would go down and down until it intersected the mesh and then keep that height value.

Is such a thing possible? What is the term for it? Is there a plugin for this already? I tried the drape and super drape and they looked promising but not quite what I need. They add the detail to the sandbox mesh when I just want the height and not the additional vertex detail.

Thank you

Gaieus, thank you for the link. I will try that.

cotty, thank you for the video. I will try the plugin Gaieus suggested to hopefully export less textures.

iichiversii, pm sent.

I found a few semi related threads but I couldn't find my exact problem. After I export my SketchUp project to FBX, it creates hundreds of textures rather than just one. This wreaks havoc on any sort of rendering I do as there is one draw call per texture. Is there any plugin free or paid for which I can use to get around this? I tried Tig's OBJ exporter and it still created multiple textures. FBX format would be preferred.

Thank you for your time.

Update: Seems I am still running into a few issues.

I have uploaded a small sample room from my project. Notice the asphalt. When I run MaterialConsolidator or Cleanup, it does not get rid of the redundant materials. It's possible I am using it incorrectly or misunderstand its use.

Here is a sample room file. Let me know what you guys see that I may be glossing over.

Thanks!

sample.skp

Gaieus: Thank you for the clarification, that is exactly what I needed. Also, I must ask. You do look a bit drunk in your avatar.

TIG: Fantastic plugin TIG! The MaterialConsolidator worked like a charm. Thank you.

Thank you all for the responses. This is an extremely helpful forum.

Rich: FBX is the intended export format.

Gaieus: Thank you. I suppose I should have asked about grouping. Does it actually create separate meshes for each group? Or I am confused about my terminology here. The reason I ask is because Unity recommends that each mesh be comprised of submeshes of a single material.

Still curious about the removing duplicates in materials too.

Thank you both for your replies.

Hi. In Sketchup, I made a level I wanted to import into Unity. I made a mistake however and made several components and built the level using components. I finally got everything textured, imported into Unity and lo and behold, the framerate is terrible. I have figured out this is do to the fact that I have:

A) a number of duplicate materials
B) I should have a separate mesh for each material

I want to continue using SketchUp as it is a fantastic way to create things easily.

For the first question, is there any way to remove the duplicate materials. For example, if I have 5 rooms and they all have the same material for their walls, because of my incorrect way of building them, they have 5 separate materials, one for each room regardless of the fact they use the same texture. Is there any way to remove the duplicates and apply just one to all of them via a script or SketchUp command?

Secondly, I know other modeling programs have them, but is there a way to create separate meshes from each material. I am not sure if groups/components are the same thing as separate meshes but if so, how would I go about doing this?

Thank you.