Updated on October 22, 2021
Textures are images that are applied to faces in your model. SketchUp includes several default textures in the Materials panel, but if you’re looking for more, this article will show you several sources for free textures, while also teaching you several tricks for finding your own textures.
There are two types of images that can be used as textures in your model.
- Seamless textures are meant to be tiled multiple times across a face. The image tiles blend together so you can’t see where the seam is. This
let’s you use a smaller image size, and you’re free to apply a seamless texture to any size face. The material will tile as many times as it needs in order to cover the face. - Full-cover textures are large images that span the entire face. They look better because there aren’t any unnatural repeating areas, and they look more custom. The drawback is they are more work to apply, and the filesizes are usually bigger than if you used a seamless texture.
In this article, I’m going to focus on seamless textures.
9 Free SketchUp Texture websites
1. 3D Warehouse
Extract materials from models on the 3D Warehouse!
When viewing a model on the 3D Warehouse that has materials in it that you’d like to use, you don’t have to download the entire model. You have the ability to extract one or more of the materials from it, instead of having to download the entire thing. This makes it a great place to look for textures.
If you’re clever about how you search the 3D warehouse, you can find models that are set up for the specific purpose of sharing materials. The thumbnail looks like a bunch of squares, with a different material applied to each one. Use keywords such as materials and textures, in combination with a descriptive term for the type of texture you’re looking for.
Some examples are flooring textures, roof textures, granite textures, tile textures, shingle textures, stone textures, wood textures, brick textures, carpet textures, concrete textures, flooring materials, stone materials, wood materials, laminate materials etc.
You might even find manufacturers that have material collections on the 3D Warehouse with
2. SketchUpTextureClub.com
Many free seamless
3. CADHatch.com
4. https://www.mtextur.com
One of the cool things about mtextur is that it there is a SketchUp extension to help you import textures directly from inside of SketchUp.
5. https://architextures.org/
This is my new favorite material site. All the materials are parametric and they are perfectly seamless because they are generated procedurally through the web app. There are plenty of free materials available for you to customize to your own liking, but there is a pro membership available as well. bump maps and hatches are included as well.
6. sharetextures.com
Most of the textures on this site include PBR maps as
7. Max Textures
Another good library of 700+ seamless textures. Built by a talented 3D artist working in the gaming industry. Keep the gaming industry in mind when searching for texture assets for your architectural models.
8. Textures.com
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9. 3dtextures.me
A good selection of architectural, sci-fi, and gaming related textures. PBR maps are included, but for SketchUp, you’ll only need the diffuse map if you’re not using any external rendering software.
Finding more textures
If you can’t find what you’re looking for on any of these websites or on the 3D Warehouse, try Googling it using the keywords “Seamless” or “Tileable”.
If you’re still stuck, you can try creating your own tileable texture using Photoshop, materialize, PixPlant, or Substance.
Learn more about textures and materials!
Check out my article 7 tips for SketchUp Materials. Want to learn how to save materials to your computer so you can use them on other projects? Check out the Ultimate
