Arroway Textures - How to Use

[Fletch]

http://www.arroway-textures.com/ has loads of wonderful textures - they even have their lower res versions available for free.

If you have a texture set from Arroway, they are quite nice to set up in Twilight... here's how:

Typically you get 3 images: diffuse, specular, and bump map...
Just put each map in the proper channel, and hit render. (see note about bump maps below)

ArrowayConcreteTextureSettingJPG.jpg (157.02 KiB) Viewed 11902 times

1. Load the diffuse texture into your SketchUp texture.
2. Scale it properly in SU's texture editor window.
3. Now apply a template you think is closest the the kind of texture you are going to create...
4. for a Shiny Wood Floor, try "Template>Plastic>Shiny"
5. Set the shininess number to as high as you like up to 50000. (Default is 180)

For this concrete texture example, we found that "Stone>Rough" was a good starting point.

1. Then we simply loaded the specular map provided into the "Reflection" channel (This is the specular channel in Twilight)
2. Then we loaded the bump map* in and left it at strength of 1.
3. Then we ran a test render, and think that it looks good... we can of course increase bump strength, but a bump above 1 is not normally recommended when using a "proper" bump map. It may be ok when linking the bump channel with some textures that come preloaded with SketchUp.
4. Do some test rendering, and adjust the bump strength, IOR of the material, and Shininess of the material until you are happy. Use as low render setting and resolution as possible when doing prelim. tests, and as you think you're getting closer to the right settings, increase resolution and quality for your testing.

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING with setting up textures is to have proper environment and lighting to test them with.
So it is best to have them already in the situation and from the point of view you know you will be seeing them in the final render... and with the best lighting possible.

*There's an issue with Twilight that we are working on that deals with .png greyscale images not working properly in the Bump Channel.
The workaround is simple.

1. Open the grey scale bump map .png image in your image editor.
2. Change mode for image from greyscale mode to color RGB mode.
3. Save as 24bit Jpeg (should be the default .jpg format)
4. Then use THAT bump map texture in your bump channel in Twilight.

[Fletch]

Set Plastic Template>Shiny
Change IOR to 1.4
Set Shininess at 600
Load Specular map into Reflection (Specular) Channel
Load bump map into Bump Channel. (see post above about converting it to an RGB mode .jpg )

[JeZ]

Thanks Fletch,
Very good info!

I think I was overcomplicating it.

Jerome

[cyan.archnet]

THANKS A LOT for the help!, Really appreciate it!

[marvins_dad]

[tomyong]

Thanks Fletch