# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > 3D modeling (map elements and height maps) >  Painting textures for sketchup models

## Fuse

I have a starship I've modeled and I'd like to get some decent texturing done on it..
I am pretty new to this, so I am open to suggestions. All I am attempting to do is have a simple metallic plating texture that doesn't look completely uniform/repeating and has some dirt and grime on it as well to make it look more realistic.

Help? lol

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## Jaxilon

CGTextures.com has a ton of metal plates and so on. The only thing with them is they have some rules if you want to use them. Like you have to put a reference on your image. 
alternatively you can just create your own metallic plating in Gimp or PS which it looks like you use. Requires a bit of artistic skill but you might do just great.

Btw, this looks pretty cool but it's really dark.

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## Fuse

Thanks I'll see what I can do.
Btw here is a brighter image.

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## mearrin69

Check out www.imageafter.com. I've gotten a lot of base textures from there and I do not believe they have any usage restrictions. Is it possible to layer textures in sketchup? The best way to break up repeats is to layer some stuff (base texture, grunge, etc.) so the repeat is less apparent.

And thanks for posting an image with "less dramatic" lighting.  :Smile:  I was struggling to make out the details of the ship. Looks awesome, very submariney. I like that you made it fairly small. So many ship modellers go in for unbelievably immense capital ships so it's nice to see a corvette or frigate-sized ship. Also love the exterior hatches and ladders, implying that people "go up on deck" a lot. I can imagine damage control guys in suits out trying to figure out what's wrong with the aft gun. There's not a lot of room for crawlspaces in a small ship so I feel like that's a nice touch of realism. Good stuff.
M

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## Fuse

Thank you very much for the compliments.
I designed it to be a small freighter with light armaments. I live near the docks in Seattle, so I see ships everyday and thats where I got the inspiration.
As for the ladders and hatches.. well the way I see it it's imperative to have those to access all areas of the ship in case of emergency,evacuation, or maintenance.

I am not finished adding detail yet, but i really wanted to get a handle on texturing. Everytime I use textures from sketchup and render in kerkythea.. it looks very bad. Even the kerkythea materials seem to look bad. *shrug*
I don't think you can layer textures in sketchup but i will see.

Again thanks for the tips and compliments

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## ravells

There's a great tutorial here for doing a ship's hull texture. The final result in the example is 'free to use', so far as I can see, so you may want to just use the end result in the example as your texture. If you want to avoid repeats, then using a procedural texture, rather than an image texture would be the way to go. Alternatively you can texture different faces or areas in different ways. What version of photoshop are using? If you're using CS4 extended or CS5 extended you can import the ship as an .obj and texture directly in photoshop (it's very good).

Edit :: Had a bit of fun doing some texturing based on the tutorial ::

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## Fuse

Apparently google cant layer textures  :Frown: 
Also, I don't have cs4. I have tried playing around more in kerkythea though and I'm getting mixed results..
Here is an image I rendered yesterday with some of the materials in kerky. I'm still not satisfied with the look of it. The edges of the ship are too sharp looking with no apparent seams and the texture is a bit off. I swear you have to be a wizard to try to render stuff in kerkythea.

Anyway.. any more tips would be appreciated  :Smile:  Also, I googled procedural texturing and it looks cool, but I have no idea how to do it.

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## Jaxilon

You could always get the Gimp for free and try that. It's a lot like Photoshop evidently only it's free. Using layers you should be able to do it. Of course, if you have no concept of PS or Gimp it might only add another learning curve to your project.

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## Fuse

I have gimp, but i'm guessing that gimp and ps will only paint the object in 2d and not all the way around?

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## Jaxilon

yeah, if you want to 3d it, you have to paint it yourself. They are a 2d type thing.

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## RecklessEnthusiasm

Fuse - actually, Photoshop CS5 (the most recent version) does have a 3-d painting option. It chugs with anything too complex since photoshop isn't designed for that or especially efficient, but you can import 3d objects, spin them around and rotate them, paint them, etc.

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## Midgardsormr

I don't think that would be useful with the free version of Sketchup, as it cannot import obj. Actually, I'm not sure that Sketchup Pro can do it, either, come to think of it. 

The major problem with texturing in Sketchup is that it doesn't have any UV tools. Without the ability to unwrap the model, you have to texture each surface individually, and it's difficult to get your seams to look natural. I'm afraid I can't really offer any advice on SU texturing—I've really only used it to pull geometry out of the 3d Warehouse for use in Maya (easier said than done, by the way).

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## mearrin69

What can Sketchup import and export? There's a tool I've used a lot for UV mapping (link) - I think it's pretty excellent. If you could create your model in Sketchup and then export to a format it can read you can set up your UVs and then go from there. Of course, it depends on what your eventual use will be. If Sketchup can't edit UVs maybe it can't handle them at all? From Ultimate Unwrap 3D you can certainly export to something useable by *most* renderers, however.
M

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## Redrobes

Blender has an unwrap UV mode too - you then export the bitmap, paint it up and then apply it back on and hope like hell it lines up. Which it should do of course.

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## Fuse

I'm going to give ultimate unwrap 3d a try first and then if that doesn't work well I'll give blender a go.
I'm kind of new to the 3d scene, so I'm not familiar with all this jargon. Thanks for all the great suggestions guys. If I get any decent results I will post.

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## Midgardsormr

Basic Sketchup only uses Collada, wrapped in Google's kmz format (if you change the .kmz to .zip and open the resulting archive, you'll find a Collada .dae inside). Sketchup Pro can export to several formats, but I'm not sure how it is with importing.

If you go the Blender route, I suggest you download version 2.4x not the new beta. I haven't been able to import a Sketchup model into version 2.5 yet, but it's relatively easy to get it into 2.4. 

To clarify the jargon, UV are the coordinates in a model's texture space, which are separate from its coordinates in 3d space. Imagine a simply poly plane: it can be oriented however you like in 3d, but a texture applied to it remains in place. This is because the plane has its own set of coordinates, designated U and V (rather than X and Y). When you have a more complex model, it still has UV coordinates, but they're folded up within the 3d space. When you unwrap the UVs, you're essentially taking the model and unfolding it so that it will lay flat. Like a box made out of paper; when you unfold it, you'll have six sides all facing up, and you could paint that that and fold it back up.

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## TheMumm

Slightly bevel all of your edges and the corner's will catch the light better  :Smile:

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