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 to make sure all of our users can enjoy powerful tools such as Bump and Reflectivity maps.

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, and surface relief (height) of your material.

This is the default material type and can be used for the majority of all possible materials.

The Albedo area controls the basic color of the surface you’re designing. You can either select a color, or choose a texture by clicking the blue folder  symbol. If choosing a texture, you’ll also receive a “Tint Color” menu, allowing you to easily change the color of the texture used. Control the amount of influence on your texture using the “Image Fade” slider. Of course, Enscape will use any UV information (texture placement) it gets from SketchUp.

The Transparency area lets you control the opacity of your model, or, in other words, the amount of light that can travel through the surface, allowing you to see what’s behind it.

• Texture
  The Texture parameter allows you to control the transparency using a 2D image, a map. It refers to the Opacity value, so a black area (which equals zero) on the image used will result in a perfectly transparent portion of the surface, while a white area will appear perfectly opaque. Grey areas will appear partially transparent, such as glass. If you load a colored image, Enscape will automatically convert it to black and white, so you don’t have to worry about that.
• Opacity
  The Opacity slider controls the overall transparency of the surface. If you’re using it combined with a transparency map, it will define the maximum opacity, so white areas on said map will appear as opaque as you’ve set using this slider.
• Tint Color
  This menu allows you to choose a color that should be added to any semi-transparent areas of your material. Very much like colored glass.
• Refractive Index
  The Refractive Index slider determines by which factor light is being bent when traveling through a transparent surface. You know this effect from looking at a glass of water, or very thick glass.
  Air has a refractive index of 1.0 – so light rays travel through it in a straight line -, water has an index of 1.33, window glass 1.52, and, for example diamonds have an index of 2.42 – they bend light quite heavily.
  For further information on this topic, feel free to have a look at the Wikipedia article.
• Frosted Glass
  If the Frosted Glass checkbox is enabled, Enscape will blur what’s visible through the transparent surface. The amount by which it’s blurred is being determined by the Roughness value in the Reflections area.

The Height option in the Enscape Material Editor allows you to utilize so called Bump, Normal, or Displacement maps in order to simulate bumps, wrinkles and dents and the lighting of these.

Bump maps can be any black and white 2D images. They tell Enscape to interpret a surface as protruding (bright parts of the texture) or recessed (dark parts of the texture).

Normal map are a type of Bump map that require an image with RGB values. These RGB components correspond to the X, Y, and Z coordinates, respectively.

Displacement maps are an enhancement of the bump mapping or normal mapping techniques applied to textures. Normally an Occlusion Map is the type of image you will use for Displacement maps. The actual technique employed in Enscape is called quadtree parallax displacement mapping for optimum performance. It’s worth noting that Displacement maps are incompatible with transparent materials so the entire “Transparency” section becomes unavailable where a displacement map has been applied (including mask textures). Furthermore, the brightness of Displacement maps cannot be further adjusted or inverted when editing the texture inside the Enscape Material Editor itself.

Height maps are incredibly valuable for realism in your images and this cannot be overstated enough!

Height maps can make for incredible surface detail and noise, without actually affecting or adding more geometry. You can use this feature for noise on concrete surfaces, wood, tiling, or even full reliefs! This can go a long way in convincing the viewer that they are looking at a realistic picture.

Textures that are available online, either paid for or free, will generally have a Normal, Bump / Height, Occlusion map included or available additionally to the basic Color texture.

It is also worth noting that normal based self-shadowing of material surfaces implemented. This feature further improves the depth perception of materials, especially with displacement maps. It’s active for sun light only when the Rendering Quality level is set to “High”. On Rendering Quality level “Ultra” artificial lights will also cast normal based shadows.

As powerful as this feature is, it’s very easy to setup. Just select an image file using the blue folder button. A Bump map doesn’t even have to be black & white, as Enscape will take care of that for you.

Normal Maps must have an RGB value in them.

As already mentioned, Displacement maps would be best served with an occlusion map if available.

You can switch between using a Bump, Normal, and Displacement map via the Type drop down option.

Select the Intensity (Bump and Displacement) or Amount (Normal) of the effect, using the respectively named slider. Negative values for bump maps. will invert the effect, causing dark areas to stick out and bright areas to be pushed in.

Displacement Maps will only adjust the amount, whether negative or positive values, in the same single direction from the minimum height value.

This area is all about the microscopic roughness of your material, determining how much of the environment you’ll see reflected in its surface.

When selecting “Clearcoat” as material type, the Enscape Material Editor interface removes the transparency option altogether.

The Clearcoat material imitates the type of paint that you find on car bodies. So, essentially the Clearcoat is a transparent resin material, and the color is defined via the Albedo option in the Material Editor window.

This material, therefore, is shiny and reflective by default, although you do have the option to dial back the reflective properties, as well as add a bump map.

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.

When selecting “Glass” as material type, the material becomes transparent with reflective properties. The Glass material simulates the appearance of real glass surfaces.

There is an option to add a Base Texture to the material. For example if you want create stained glass, you can add that texture and bump/normal map to it, adjust the opacity and control reflections. You can also enable the Frosted Glass option to blur the background based on the material roughness.

The Grass type material, as seen in the material editor, looks almost the same as the Generic type. While it’s lacking the Transparency part, it instead features a Grass Settings area. Apart from the Albedo area, which you can use to color your grass (also using a texture), the Height– and Reflections parts are only useful if you plan to toggle the Grass Rendering setting on and off (this can be found in theEnscape General Settings -> Performance -> Grass/Carpet Rendering option).

NOTE: The minimum surface area for the sprites of the Grass material to show in Enscape is 12.2cm x 12.3cm. Any surface that has this Material Type applied and is smaller than these dimensions will result in the sprites not being visible in Enscape.

The Self-illuminated type material, when selected, tells Enscape to literally handle your material as if glowing, and emitting actual light. You can choose a brightness between 1 and 100000 candela per square meter (cd/m²), as well as the color of the light.

Control the water movement. Change the speed and the direction your water is flowing to simulate e.g. a river.

This can be set using the global Wind Settings to be found in the Visual Setting-> Atmosphere tab, the same as for the Grass material. These global settings can be overridden for Water however, and this override is available in the Material Editor when Water is selected as material Type.

• Intensity
  Control the speed in which the water is flowing.
• Direction Angle
  Control the overall direction water is moving in.

Fine tune the look of your waves, whether it’s the overall scale to match the proportions of your model, or just the height to control whether your water looks rather wild or calm.

• Caustics Intensity
  Under Detail Settings, Caustics Intensity controls the amount of light that 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 for the light to reflect off of.
  

Before introducing the Material Editor, Enscape would let you decide material properties using keywords you simply had to include in the material name. This framework is still included in the Enscape feature set, and can be used freely alongside the material editor for greater comfort.

These are the keywords to include in the SketchUp Material name to tell Enscape how to display it more realistically.