Now that SketchUp 2025 has been released, SketchUp's materials have experienced a significant upgrade. All materials that ship with SketchUp are now PBR (physically-based rendering) materials that look much better than the older materials, which at the time were designed with efficiency in mind. However, that efficiency often came with graininess, unpleasant repeating patterns, and some other artifacts. The new materials are in many cases of render-quality while still being quite efficient.
As a result of this change, the size of the entirety of all shipped materials went from 8.9 MB (SketchUp 2024) to 248 MB (SketchUp 2025).
How About SketchUp's Old Materials?
So, what do you do if - for consistency reasons or any other - you want to keep some of the old pre-2025 materials around (in addition to the new ones)? It is actually easy to do that. As long as you haven't uninstalled SketchUp 2024, they are all still on your hard-drive!
Here are the steps:
Step 1: Find...
This image of a wood-veneer tray with a decorative brushed metal ball was exported right from SketchUp - no rendering software needed
SketchUp 2025 introduced a new graphics system for materials: PBR (physically-based rendering) photoreal materials. As you can see in the image above, you can now have shiny, glossy, dimpled, and otherwise textured materials right in SketchUp's model area. You can then use that new appearance while modeling or when you export images or animations.
As I discussed in my review of SketchUp 2025, the PBR materials look best when you enable one of the new environments (you can see one in the images below (in the reflection). In addition, you may need to make sure that the "Photoreal Materials" are also enabled for SketchUp's modeling area. You can do that on the Styles toolbar or in the View > Face Style menu.
In this post I will give you a visual overview of the new PBR material parameters. So that the...
Interior reflections like these (on the floor) can easily be done right inside SketchUp with this little trick
SketchUp 2025 introduced some very nice visualization capabilities: PBR (physically-based rendering) materials and environments. While those are great (especially for exteriors), indoor material reflections are a bit trickier since objects cannot be reflected even with the new PBR materials.
In this tutorial I'll show you how you can create some good-looking reflections (in e.g. floors or mirrors) with a simple trick. Check out the video below for a walk-through of the process. But in short, here's what you need to do:
Step 1: Create an inverted copy of the model
As a first step, turn your entire model (or at least what will be visible) into a group - or even better: a component (to retain the live link between the two copies). Then flip it along the reflective surface either using the Flip tool or by copying/scaling it. In my case I need a floor...
Although I had recorded some introductory videos about point cloud modeling with Scan Essentials in SketchUp that are included at the end of this playlist, those didn't go into sufficient detail on a bunch of the features. Based on my presentation "From Points to Polygons" at the recent 2024 3D Basecamp, I decided to rectify that shortcoming and produce a set of videos that introduce Trimble's Scan Essentials extension and present various workflows that can be used with this tool. Those videos are included below and in the aforementioned playlist.
As I mention in the videos, you can download a sample point cloud from this site if you want to try this out for yourself.
Let me know in the comments if this is helpful for you and if there are any other topics that you would like covered.
What are Point Clouds?
Point clouds are created using either laser/LIDAR scanners like Trimble's X9 or photogrammetry. If you use a laser scanner, then you...
In case you are in need of an opinionated architectural critique, look no further. You can now employ AI for that! With the recently introduced vision capabilities in OpenAI's services and therefore my OpenAI Explorer SketchUp extension, you can now ask questions about what is in your SketchUp model. But that's not all: For a little bit more bite in that critique, you can even give the AI response a specific personality, e.g. the snarky critic in my video below.
You can do that via the System Message option in its settings. Just add a line like the one shown in the image below and then that instruction will apply to the entire conversation between you and the AI.
As you likely know by now, you can download the OpenAI Explorer SketchUp extension and learn more about how it works here.
Got any other fun and/or useful ways to employ this new tool in SketchUp? Let me know in the comments below.
Video
https://youtu.be/Nv4jzMoY7y4...
