Hi there, my name is Josh, and today I want to talk about how to apply a texture to a
curved surface in SketchUp.
You can see here I've got this .jpg image file of a wine label, and I want to toss that
on the wine bottle here in my SketchUp model.
Let's cruise over there and take a look.
The first thing I want to do is get into the correct context before I import anything.
So what I mean by that is I'm going to grab the Select tool and double click into the
edit mode for this wine bottle component.
And if I select once more, click once more there you can see now I've got the more complex
surface selected of this entire wine bottle, but I really want to isolate just the part
here with the label.
So to do that I need to reveal the hidden geometry.
If I go to View>Hidden Geometry I can do that.
This is a good thing to map to a keyboard shortcut.
I use this one quite a bit.
So View>Hidden Geometry I can now click on a single face or polygon on there and now
this is what I want because I want to apply my image file right to this face in SketchUp.
So I can go to now go to File>Import.
Click on the image file that I want there, and note that it's nice to have All Supported
Image Types selected here, that'll make all your image files easily selectable.
And Use As Texture is really important.
You want to make sure this is selected for this mapping of a texture onto a curved surface.
So Use As Texture is an important step.
Alright, so now the image file is kind of hanging onto our cursor there, we need to
choose an anchor point here.
So I'm going to click on the bottom corner of that face there in SketchUp and then a
second time click on the upper bounds of that.
And that looks a little bit odd at first because it's kind of cutting that off, only applying
it to that one face, but that's what we want.
Because now I can use the Paint Bucket tool to sample it and apply it to the rest of these
slivers or rectangles that should hold this image file.
So I'm going to click on the Paint Bucket tool, you'll notice that the Materials Browser
pops up and you can see our image file in there as well, that's in the In Model category here.
And then in the bottom left notice that SketchUp is letting us know that there's a keyboard
modifier for this tool, for this Paint Bucket tool, Command is our sample material modifier.
If you're on the the Windows version of SketchUp that'll be the Control key.
So if I hold down Command, you'll see the icon changes to an eye dropper.
So I'm going to keep that held down, click here to sample that texture and apply it to
the adjacent face.
So I can cruise down the line there.
Turn off hidden geometry.
Take a look.
Yeah that looks pretty good.
I want to show that again in a different context here in our model.
Let's cruise over to a curved wall that I have.
And this is a concave situation here.
And, of course, the first thing I want to do is get into the correct context, so with
the Select tool I'm going to double click to get into this wall group.
I'm going to double click again because I've isolated this curved section a little bit
further.
And let's now go to View>Hidden Geometry.
And I want to apply this, I've got a mural that I found online, an image of a mural that
I want to apply to this curved wall section.
So now I can go to File>Import, and there's the image file I'm looking for.
Use As Texture, that's good.
And Import.
First click is the bottom anchor point, and for my second click I'm actually going to
make it a little bit smaller so I can show you how to how easy it is to adjust the size
even after it is that you place it that initial time.
So now I need to clearly scale this up a little bit.
All I have to do is right click go to Texture>Position, and I usually like to make sure that the four
grips here on the tiling image are kind of in the middle, and then the green grip, or
the green pin here, is what I want to use to scale this image.
So I'm going to first just click and drag, get that in the bottom corner there of my
wall.
And as I scale this up, I'm going to keep my eye on the upper bounds of this material
swatch here so that it lines up with the geometry there.
Alright, looks pretty good.
Right click>Done.
And I'm going to sample this now, and actually turn off hidden geometry.
I want to show you what happens if you don't have hidden geometry turned on here
and I try to apply this texture to the curved surface all at once.
Sometimes it may work, depends on what you're doing, but usually SketchUp doesn't quite
know exactly how you want that image to tile across a larger surface, so in this case we've
got a seam right there.
So to control this better that's where we need View>Hidden Geometry activated to reveal
the polygon breakdown here.
I'm going to undo that step so I'm back to this point.
And now I'm going to sample this and apply it just like with the wine label.
Sometimes it may not work, it may not tile as you wish, so the way that I always do this
to make sure that it does is when I sample this one and apply it to the adjacent face
I just keep doing that.
So sample, apply.
Sample, apply with that keyboard modifier.
Turn off hidden geometry.
Looks pretty good.
Alright, there's certainly a little more to talk about in terms of using textures on curved
surfaces in SketchUp so stay tuned for another Skill Builder that we have that will talk
about the projected option when adding a texture to a curved surface.
So thanks for watching.
Cheers!