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The native SketchUp material editor supports only a texture and a transparency value – not
necessarily sufficient to create visually stunning images such as the ones our users usually achieve .
This is why we came up with our very own material editor specifically for SketchUp, to make sure all
of our users can enjoy powerful tools such as Bump- and Reflectivity maps.
In addition to this Knowledgebase Article, you can also have a look at this best-practices blog post by
Dan Stine.
the Sample Paint ( ) tool in SketchUp. The Enscape material editor will switch to any selected
material immediately.
Material Types
In general, there’s four types of materials you can select in the Enscape material editor:
Generic
Grass
Water
Foliage
Generic
The “Generic” material type is suited for any materials that aren’t supposed to be rendered as grass
blades, water surface, or have translucency applied.
It gives you control over the color, reflectivity, transparency, surface relief (bump) and light
emission of your material.
This is the default material type and can be used for the majority of all possible materials.
Bump maps, again, can be any black and white 2D images. They tell Enscape to interpret a surface
as protruding (bright parts of the texture) or pushed in (dark parts of the texture).
This is incredibly valuable for realism in your images!
Bump maps can make for an incredible surface detail and noise, without having to use a lot of
geometry or modeling. You can use this feature for noise on concrete surfaces, wood, or even full
reliefs! This can go a long way in convincing the viewer of looking at a realistic picture.
As powerful of a feature this is, it’s very easy to setup. Just select an image file using the –
Button. It doesn’t even have to be black & white, Enscape will take care of that for you.
Then, select the intensity the effect should be applied with, using the “Amount” slider. Negative values
will invert the effect, causing dark areas to stick out and bright areas to be pushed in.
Grass Settings
Height: The Height slider controls the height – or intensity – of waves in water materials.
Size: The Size slider controls the overall scale of your water. This way you can adjust the water
behavior for various project sizes, close ups etc.
Detail Settings
Caustics Intensity
Caustics occur when light is being refracted through waves in water. Control this beautiful effect
using this slider. Keep in mind you will only see this effect as long as there’s a surface beneath the
water to reflect the light.
No caustics to 100% caustics visibility
Foliage
When selecting “Foliage” as material type, the Enscape Material Editor interface will look identical to
when selecting “Generic” as type.
The difference this material type will cause is only visible on single-face objects. Please make sure
the object you apply this material to doesn’t have any depth, and also that the material is applied to
both sides of the face.
If these conditions are met, Enscape will apply Translucency to objects this material type is applied
to. This means that, if the Sun(yes, this doesn’t work combined with artificial lighting) is located
behind said surface, it will be illuminated on both sides. This is common in nature for example with
leaves, which is why this is the most common use case for this type of material.
These are the keywords to include in the SketchUp Material name to tell Enscape how to display it
more realistically.
Keywords and their effects
KEYWORD EXPLANATION
Water, Ocean, River Draws the material as a water surface.
Vegetation, Foliage, Leaf Adds translucency to thin surfaces (single face
Emissive Emissive material based on the material color
Grass, Tall Grass, Wild Grass Realistic grass material based on the underlying surfa