Applying textures and realistic materials will make your 3D model much more interesting. In this lesson I will show you how to do it.

If you have carefully followed the previous lessons, you surely know that each of these cabinets represents a separate component. This information is very important for the correct application of the material, because any experienced SketchUp user will tell you that this is only done inside the selected object. To show you why this is important I will simply select the entire segment and run the Paint Bucket function. I could achieve the same effect by pressing the B key because in both cases a palette with the materials currently available to me will appear on the right side of the screen. After that, it won’t be difficult for me to click on a field that represents a certain type of material, e.g. natural wood, and it will automatically be framed in blue. In addition, an enlarged view of the selected material will appear at the top of the palette, which means that everything is ready for its application.

Since I haven’t selected any particular component, I can place the cursor over this cabinet and simply press the left mouse button. At that moment, all its parts will be “coated” with the selected type of wood, but this will not affect the other segments. In other words, even though the selected segment and the one next to it represent the same component, the change I just made will not be automatically propagated to the rest of the model. So I will undo this change and try again.

In fact, you can use this system for assigning materials if you want to highlight individual elements. To that end, I will choose the red color from the palette and with a few clicks mark the segments that I think should be changed. This way I quickly achieved my goal, but it would have been even better if I had done it within a component.

To show you how it looks in practice, I will first go back to the palette containing the different types of wood and then start the Select function and double-click to “open” this cabinet ie. basic component. After that, I can extract one shelf in the same way, and to make it clearer to you what I have achieved, I will start the Hide Rest Of Model option from the View menu and thus temporarily remove all other elements. Now I can go back to the material palette, select a specific type of wood, and click on the surface that represents the front of the shelf. As you can see, the material will be assigned only to the selected surface and this change will be automatically reflected on all other shelves. Admittedly, they look a little paler at the moment, but that’s just a reflection of the currently selected element. If I go back to the previous mode, you will see that all the shelves look the same, which means that I applied the desired material correctly.

With that out of the way, I can reselect just one shelf and try to cover all of its surfaces with the same material. To that end, I’m going to select this type of tree again, move the cursor, and press the Shift key. Next to the icon indicating that the Paint Bucket function is currently active, three small squares will appear, which means that it will now have an effect on all surfaces. In the end, I just need to press the left mouse button and paint the entire shelf with one stroke.

If you want to display another part of this cabinet in the same way, apply the following technique. First, start the Select function, press the Esc key and double-click to select the appropriate element, e.g. this vertical side. After that, you can start the Paint Bucket function by pressing the B key and automatically paint all surfaces while holding the Shift key. I will move to the closed part of the closet in the same way and complete this task with a few moves. In the end, I just need to press the Esc key a couple of times and check what I have achieved.

As you can see, this way I managed to cover almost all the elements, except those that do not belong to any component. This can be easily corrected, so I will repeat the same process a few more times because I would like the entire library to be made of the same material.