Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Tutorials/guides/tips on how to use Indigo and the Indigo exporters
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cholme@me.com
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Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by cholme@me.com » Thu Jan 24, 2013 9:47 am

Hello there, I was hoping someone would have a few tips for me. I am new to Indigo and photo rendering in general... so I don't know all the terms and such.

I got Arroway's wood volumes. I use SketchUp for modeling. I am hoping someone can help with workflow. I can't seem to get anywhere near the look of the Arroway models. Mine don't even look that realistic. I don't quite understand how to apply the textures. Do I create a new material in SketchUp using the Arroway Textures? Or skip that and make a texture in Indigo? If it is the latter, how do you get the grain in the right direction? What about end grain?

Like I said, I am a newbie... so I need someone willing to give specifics to their workflow. I don't know all the settings and really don't understand all the different numbers and such in Indigo.

I attached the Arroway example and my Render with the same material. I tried uploading my SU model but it doesn't seem to let me upload it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Chris
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Arroway test.jpg

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cotty
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Re: Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by cotty » Thu Jan 24, 2013 10:08 am

About the end grain:
they flip and scale the texture from the top and use it for the front end...
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Headroom
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Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by Headroom » Thu Jan 24, 2013 1:56 pm

The end grain texture "trick" is actually explained somewhere in the forum on the Arroway web site. Takes some digging though and is easily skipped. It works very well on things like that table with relatively sharp or fined edges. On curved pieces its more challenging but doable with some patience.
A little addition to what Cotty already wrote and you as a woodworker may have experienced first hand is that end grain is usually a little rougher than the long grain and also darker, particularly when using a more open pored wood. In order to address that you can use another Indigo Material using the same UV map and either a darker diffuse texture, which you could do in photoshop, Gimp, etc. , or for a quick lazy effect turn on the Gamma value in the diffuse channel. You may want to use a little higher bump value as well.

In order to place textures precisely on geometry you need to UV unwrap it ( the geometry) I am a Blender user and could explain that in detail for Blender but I am sure some of the more experienced Sketchup users will chime in.

Once you have UV unwrapped your geometry you will want to create a new Material.
The Arroway Wood textures come with a Diffuse, Bump and Specular map. While Indigo comes with similarly named " Slots" to use these I have found it to be more practical for my purposes to us these slightly different.

I will make some screenshots of the settings for the Material that I used here http://www.indigorenderer.com/forum/vie ... 1&start=15 and post them later.
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Headroom
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Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by Headroom » Thu Jan 24, 2013 2:11 pm

Some more thoughts.

Due to the fact that there are several channels for each material I usually start with the most subtle effect. For these woods I start with the Specularity. My general approach is to create two separate materials, one diffuse and one phong material and then generate a Blend material to blend these to material into one using the Specularity map to control how they are blended. That has worked best for me when using the Arroway textures. I've tried before to use the Specularity map in the Exponent channel but not with much success.

The next step is the bump map, that will need to go into both of the blended materials with the same settings. Also here restraint is needed not to exaggerate the effect.

When those two look correct I add the diffuse channel and fine tune further from there. I've used either Gimp, or Pixelmator ( I am on a Mac ) to increase the contrast, etc. for the Specularity map to get better results.
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Headroom
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Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by Headroom » Thu Jan 24, 2013 2:22 pm

Also, If you are concerned with realism then bevel your edges. Actually for close up furniture shots you need a mini fillet/ radius to get some specular highlights on your edges.

Also, as I mentioned subtle effects, the more subtle the effect, the longer your will need to let it render to see the effect. That can make fine tuning a material a exercise in patience ;-)

Subtle effects like the wood exhibited in many of the Arroway demo images take some time to clear. Well beyond the graininess of the render you posted.
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cholme@me.com
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Re: Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by cholme@me.com » Thu Jan 24, 2013 6:08 pm

A lot of great input... thanks a lot. The endgrain trick makes sense. I am really hoping that someone using SketchUp will chime in though. Perhaps I am just being thick... but I just don't get it. I sort of understand how to UV Map... it seems like just positioning the textures correctly in SU... but then if you create a new material in Indigo, doesn't that supersede the texture layout in SU? And if I use the "color" set to SketchUp" then it seems like the bump map won't match up.

If someone knows of a video or literally a step by step list I would be very grateful.

I am usually great a figuring out programs. Most I can watch a few videos and figure out the rest on my own.. Indigo is not at all intuitive... at least not the settings. I don't get the terms... albedo, specular, quadratic ... its all Greek.

Thanks,

Chris

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Re: Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by Zom-B » Thu Jan 24, 2013 6:53 pm

Since you are new, here some basics:

Regarding Skindigo here you have a bunch of great Video Tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD14E96A2CD263FE1

Also the online Manual can be of some help:
http://www.indigorenderer.com/documenta ... o-sketchup


UV Mapping is so basic 3D work that you should find 1001 Tutorials on the web for it ;)
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cotty
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Re: Arrroway Textures with SketchUp and Indigo

Post by cotty » Thu Jan 24, 2013 7:03 pm

Zom-B wrote:Regarding Skindigo here you have a bunch of great Video Tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD14E96A2CD263FE1
+1 !

And for texturing tasks in SketchUp, you should have a look at the plugins SketchUV, ThruPaint, the UV related functions of QuadFaceTools and UV tool kit.
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