Friday, October 2, 2009

Dear SketchUp Island: Make Unique Texture




Dear SketchUp Island: If the purpose of "Make Unique Texture" is to cut off the excess of a texture and reduce it to the essentials, then why does the file size actually sometimes increase when this is done?" --Questioning

Good question, Questioning. I'm going to try something new. Maybe some smart person out there can post an answer in the comments to this post.

My experience is that there is a pixel dimension (1024 for example) to which the new images are resized. In some cases this means taking a relatively small area and increasing the pixel dimensions considerably. If this is the case then there must be a way to adjust the setting. But how?

Or could it be that you have failed to purge your unused textures? Since you have made a new texture, you can discard the old one.

One thing "Make Unique Texture" is good for is that you can use it to square up an image (for example a wall) and then export the texture to an editor and make changes (like remove trees and pedestrians), and then automatically it back into your model.

I want to point out one last thing: there is a new SketchUp Help Forum to replace the old and somewhat congested SketchUp Help Google Group. Post a question, find an answer, and vote on good answers. You can visit it here.