Discover how to add 3D text and materials to a model using SketchUp. This article provides a comprehensive guide on how to enhance the appearance of your 3D model by adding text and materials.
Key Insights
- The article demonstrates how to use SketchUp to add 3D text to a model, such as a recycling can, enabling you to customize your model with words or symbols.
- You can adjust the height and depth of the text, and the tool allows the text to snap to any face of the model for precise placement.
- The article also highlights how to use the paint bucket tool in SketchUp to add materials and textures to your model, which can help distinguish different parts of the model and enhance its visual appeal.
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All right, welcome back. So in this video, we are going to add 3D text to our recycling can and also add materials to make it look pretty cool. So let's go to the 3D text button right here on the large toolset.
We'll click this and we'll get this dialog box. It says place 3D text. This is where we can, you know, fill this in with words or symbols.
So I'm going to type in recycle and I want to use the Tahoma font and then it creates a standard height of 10 inches and a standard extrusion, which is like the thickness of the text, at 1 inch. I want this height to be 2 inches and I want my extruded depth to be 1/4 inch. So I'll do 1/4 inches.
So I will select place and as you can see, when I bring this in, it wants to snap to any face I hover over, right? So I want to go orbit without clicking anything yet and then go to this top center of my recycling can and find a good spot, and once you're ready, click, and then we can, you know, leave that there. 3D text is also a quick and easy way to add symbols to our model. If we go to our SKP 101 Downloads folder, I included a recycle symbol dot txt file.
If we double-click this, there's this little recycling symbol Unicode icon. If I highlight this and then CTRL+C for copy and then go back into my SketchUp file, click in here and then go back to my text tool, I can actually, you know, delete all this and then right-click paste or CTRL+V, I can paste the recycling symbol Unicode in here and I can adjust my height. I want my height to be a little taller this time, 4 inches.
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My depth still stays the same at 1/4 inch. I'll click place. There we go.
Here is our recycling symbol. I'll zoom in here and orbit around, and as you can see, it wants to kind of snap to this because of a little bit of distance. So I'm going to put it over here, and then I'm going to use my move tool to move it around and get it right into the center, just like that.
I will zoom extents and orbit around so I can see both. Zoom extents again and then I will save the file. Alright, now finally, I would like to add materials to distinguish my trash can and recycling can.
So follow me as we paint these two objects. First, if we go to the paint bucket tool on our large toolset right here and click this, this will open our materials dialog box. If we select this little white toggle menu and click this, it will show all of the various materials that SketchUp offers built into the program.
Let's go to colors and scroll down on our scroll wheel with our mouse or by dragging this. Let's go right in the middle. You want to find this nice green color for our body and recycling can. Let's use G06 and we'll paint this recycle word and the recycle symbol and the body of our recycling can.
Now, let's paint the top of our trash can. I want to use a nice, dark gray paint color. So let's scroll all the way down to the bottom and let's find, you know, M07 and then we'll click that and then we'll paint the top of the trash can.
You know what? I don't want to paint the entire trash can, so I'm going to undo that. I only want to paint the top, so because this is a group, it's going to want to paint everything. So I'm going to go to select and ungroup this explode.
Now I have the top and the body separately. So let's go back to our paint bucket tool, then click this M07, and then we'll paint the top of this. Then, now, let's paint the body of our trash can. I want to have a nice, concrete-type texture.
So let's go into this little toggle menu and click this and let's go over to asphalt and concrete. There's lots of different things. I think I want to use this concrete aggregate smoke.
I'm going to click this, and I'm going to click on the body. There we go.
So let's go back to my Select tool. I'll select this, hold down Control with the plus symbol together, and right-click make group so that way this is all kind of combined. We could also have double-clicked and gone into this and painted each one as well.
So next, let's paint the top of the recycling can lid. So I'm going to pan over a little bit so we can paint the top and also you want to paint the bottom matching colors. I'm thinking this should be more of a nice synthetic plastic-type color.
So I'll go over to my menu bar in the materials dialog box. Click this and let's go to synthetic surfaces. This has, you know, a variety of synthetic plastics or materials.
So I want to do this quartz light gray. Then I want to paint this top, which you can kind of see now, has created this nice texture over that. Then I go orbit and pan down to the bottom.
I'm going to paint the bottom and there we have it. I'm going back to my Select tool, cursor window over all of this, and right-click make group for the entire recycle can. I'm going to zoom extents and then save the file.
There we have it; we’ve created our trash can and recycling can. I will see you in the next video.
