Texture positioning

A material with an image repeats it across every face it’s painted on. By default the image lines up with the model’s axes, at the size of one repeat set in the material. To run wood grain along a board, start bricks at a corner or put a picture on a wall at an angle, position the texture on the face.

Position a texture

1. Paint the face with a material that has an image.
2. Right-click the face and choose Texture > Position.

Four pins appear at the corners of one repeat of the image, the one you right-clicked, and a dashed outline shows that repeat. The pins work in one of two modes. Fixed Pins, in the right-click menu, switches between them.

Fixed pins

With fixed pins, which is how positioning starts, each pin has its own job:

Pin	Drag it to
Red	Move the image. Dragging anywhere on the face does the same.
Green	Turn and scale the image about the red pin.
Blue	Scale and shear the image, keeping the red and green pins.
Yellow	Distort the image in perspective, keeping the other three pins.

Drag the green pin around the red one to rotate wood grain, for example.

Free pins

With Fixed Pins unchecked, every pin pins the image down: drag any pin and the image stretches so that the other pins stay where they are.

Move a pin

Click a pin without dragging to pick it up, then click to put it down elsewhere on the image. The image doesn’t move; the pin now holds a different spot of it, so you can, for example, pin the corner of a brick and turn the bricks about that corner.

Finish

Press Enter, click outside the face or choose Done from the right-click menu to keep the placement. Escape cancels the drag in progress, or finishes when you aren’t dragging.

Each drag and each command is its own undo step, and Undo and Redo are in the right-click menu while you position.

Right-click commands

While you position a texture, right-click for:

• Done: keep the placement and return to the tool you used before.
• Reset: go back to the placement the face had when you started.
• Flip > Left/Right or Up/Down: mirror the image about the pins’ repeat.
• Rotate > 90, 180 or 270: turn the image counterclockwise by that many degrees about the pins’ repeat.
• Fixed Pins: switch between fixed and free pins.
• Undo and Redo.

Reset a texture’s position

Right-click a positioned face and choose Texture > Reset Position to give it the default placement again. Reset is one undo step.

Continue a texture onto other faces

While painting, Alt-click a face to pick its material and its texture placement. Every face you paint next with that material continues the image from the sampled face, as if it were paper wrapped around the corner they share, so grain and bricks run on across the edge. Faces parallel to the sampled one continue the same pattern.

Choosing a material in the Materials panel paints with the default placement again.

Change the size of one repeat

The size of one repeat belongs to the material, so changing it resizes the image on every face painted with it. In the Materials panel, select the material and click Edit image…, then set Width and Height under Size of one repeat. Keep image proportions changes the other side with it.

When placements stay

A face keeps its texture placement when you move, rotate, scale, mirror or copy it, or the group or component it’s in, and when you extrude it: the image moves with the face. Placements save with the project, and SketchUp files open with their texture positions.

Scripts

Scripts can position textures too, with Face.positionTexture, read the texture coordinates at a point with Face.uvAt and set or clear the placement with Face.uvTransform. See the API reference.