Apologies for two threads in relatively quick succession, seemed appropriate to give this issue its own space, and I was unable to find threads on this topic using the search function.

Following on from my previous thread, I successfully UV mapped a section of model using thomthom's Quad Face Tools:

My thanks again for helping out with that, although a new problem has appeared.

This model is ultimately bound for a game, and to convert to that game's native file format, the model needs to go through 3Ds Max. When exporting to .3ds format from SketchUp however, presumably due to the UV mapped surfaces as mentioned above, duplicate textures are produced in the export. That is, what I have in my SketchUp as 'Tunnel.png', which is then mapped as necessary, is exported as Tunnel01.png, Tunnel02.png etc, with each duplicate reflecting its orientation/scaling in the UV mapping:

If I were to simply apply the materials without any such UV mapping and export to .3ds format, this does not occur. It is a problem as the game will not recognise the surfaces these duplicate textures represent unless I include all of the duplicate textures in the texture file (which is brutally inefficient).

Has anyone else encountered this .3ds export problem, and is there a way to get SketchUp to export the model and textures properly without this duplication problem?

Again, my thanks to anyone who can help.

*I know it ought to be possible to export the SketchUp model and do the mapping in 3DS, but I guess like everyone else here, I love SketchUp for its simplicity of use over other modelling programs. I don't have the foggiest idea how to perform similar tasks in 3DS that I can in SU.

The Quad Face Tools plugin you suggested seems to work great so far, my thanks to you for drawing my attention to it (and thomthom for creating it). The texture distortion is acceptable, I'm just happy that I won't have to spend hours repeating the same tedious task for hundreds of faces. Thanks again.

I have 'UV Toolkit' and 'UVTools' however neither seem to be working in this case, or maybe I'm just doing it wrong. In the case of the former, my understanding is that it will only work on quads, but the geometry that 'Follow Me & Keep' spits out is triangulated. Please let me know if that is incorrect, or if I'm missing something obvious here.

A simplified example:
(in this case, the surface curves upwards a little before curving down, while consistently curved around horizontally)

My attempts to apply UV mapping in this case has led to distorted or poorly aligned texturing. If possible, would you be able to suggest any other suitable tools for this task? Or perhaps a few pointers if the tools I already have are sufficient and I am simply using them incorrectly?

Hi there,

I'm attempting to model a railway tunnel, using the plugin 'Follow and Keep' (by user Wikii?). I have a texture which I would like to apply to the ground surface of the tunnel - a texture featuring the railway lines, sleepers, ballast etc. This texture would need to remain parallel to the walls of the tunnel at all times, so that the railway line appears contiguous. However, the plugin does not seem to preserve textures (creates geometry without material), and I would prefer not to have to do the alignment manually for each face due to the number of faces involved.

Is there a way to preserve texture alignment when extruding a tunnel with horizontal and vertical curves?

Any assistance provided is greatly appreciated.

Excellent, just what I was looking for! This will save me bundles of time, thank you for your help

I was hoping there would be an easier way to do it than using the entity information/text tags manually for each of some 500 lots - not to worry! Thank you for your time and assistance anyway

I tried that script - I was only able to use it to format existing annotations that I had already created manually, rather than the script automatically creating its own annotations based on surfaces/edges I have selected. Was I using it wrong? I'm using SU Pro v6.0.515 if that makes any difference.

Hi there,

I'm currently undertaking a project based on the development of a small-scale housing estate - approximately 500 lots. I would like to be able to display the area of each plot, and the length of each bounding edge, without having to use SketchUp's text tool over and over. I have looked through the Plugin Index and flicked through a few pages of the forums but have not been able to find quite what I need for this.

Are there any plugins to automate the process of annotating surfaces with their respective areas and boundary lengths? Or is there an in-built feature in SketchUp to do so?

Any help would be much appreciated.