Create Your Own Materials

SketchUp’s material libraries offer a variety of useful materials that you can add to your models. To meet your design intent, you may need to create materials using 2D image files as a starting point.

Windows

To create a new material from your own files or color codes open the Materials panel and follow these steps:

1. On the Select tab, click Create New Material (). The Create Material dialog will open.
2. Type a name for the new material in the text field.
3. Use the color wheel to choose a color.
4. To use an image add, select Use Texture Image.
5. In the File Explorer window that appears locate and select an image file.
6. Adjust the texture size and opacity. If you have corresponding texture maps for your image texture, you can add and adjust them here.
7. Click OK. Your new material will appear selected in the In Model collection.

Tip: If you want to add texture maps so that your material can react to environments, click Generate Textures () in the image preview. For more information, see Generate Textures.

MacOS

To create a new material from an image, open the Colors panel and follow these steps:

1. Click the Textures Palette tab.
2. Using the dropdown, select the collection where you want the new material to appear.
3. Click the context menu and select New Material.
4. In the Finder window that appears, select an image file for your texture.
5. Type a name for the texture, set the width and height for the tile size, and click OK.
6. Your new material will now appear in the selected collection.

To use a specific color as a material:

1. Select the Color Wheel, Color Sliders, Image Palettes, or Pencils tab.
2. Use the options in your selected tab to create a color.
3. Select the Textures Palette tab.
4. Using the dropdown, select the collection where you want to save the color.
5. Drag the color swatch from the bottom of the Colors panel into that collection’s list of materials.