When is the material scaling issue with Sketchup and Datasmith going to finally be resolved ?

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For several years now there has been a scaling issue with materials on an imported Datasmith Sketchup Model and while there have been some temporary workarounds suggested the issue seems to never really be resolved.

I just tried to place TM materials on a Sketchup 2021 Model. The size of the materials came in all over the place. In some parts they were huge in other parts they were tiny. So I picked and adjusted all the workaround steps of using the different UV options cubic, from object, cylinder etc. The material scales were a disaster. Nothing seemed even consistent about applying the material and when I replaced it with another TM material the scales changed again.

This issue has been around for several years and still seems to have the same problems.

It had been suggested that I place all Sketchup materials on the model before importing and then once they were replaced with TM materials the scaling issue would be correct. Not the case. The scale was different between locations of the same TM materials that replaced the Sketchup materials. Go back hit cubic UV, from object UV and it still is a mess. If you go back through posts you will find numerous complaints about this issue and yet only one temporary workaround that really does not work so well.

Please fix this issue. I am a huge proponent of Twinmotion but this issue that keeps on showing up unresolved makes it difficult to truly recommend TM to others using Sketchup.

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Hey man,

As you know, I've been dealing with this issue for ages. My original post hopefully goes somewhere to explain it in a lot more detail for those devs who read this. Click here.

Hope we get it sorted :)

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Yes, as per some of our previous conversation, things were working fine for a while and now it is back to the scaling issue. Hopefully things will be resolved soon.

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Hello ,

Thank you for posting in the community about this behavior and I also looked at your earlier discussion post here:

https://twinmotionhelp.epicgames.com/s/question/0D54z00007d4oDnCAI/sketchup-uv-material-scales-wrong-twinmotion-20222-preview-1-and-older-versions

I have provided your feedback to our team and at this time I do not have additional information to provide but you can also make a suggestion on our road-map for improvements to the scaling issue you are facing: https://portal.productboard.com/7pu88c9kpmqtzt8hwg6arujh/tabs/4-under-consideration

Currently a way to avoid scaling issue is to apply materials with textures to the Sketchup model before bringing it into. Sorry any inconvenience this may cause at this time.

Kind regards,

Vincent B.

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Thanks for your answer Vincent, however my post clealry demonstrates why applying textured materials in the Sketchup model doesn't avoid the scaling issues. However let me expalin again.

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On the right is a standard SketchUp model, the left, is the model in TM. You will see the standard SU timber texture on the right,t then replaced with a standard brick TM material on the left. I've used a TM primitive to demonstate how the brick should look when scaled correctly.

Notice how the brick is not just the wrong scale, it's compressed on the y axis. I have done some subsequent research however and found the following. Please could you pass this onto the development team?

Using my example above, I can see why Datasmith has skewed the proportions of the material. It's using the texture dimensions set within SketchUp to place it's own materials.

Snipaste_2022-05-31_09-47-54
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Note above, the default texture is set in SU to 3084mm x 1219mm. Twinmotion is applying this scale to it's own materials.

If I change this timber material (and unlock the aspect ratio), to 3000mm x 3000mm, suddenly it works. In fact, if I change any material to 3000 x 3000 then it matches the TM materials perfectly.

However, as the materials in SU all have different properties due to the shape of the textures they use, the translation into TM from SU is bugged. Therefore, TM needs the option to ignore previous texture scaling/UV mapping.

So I've identified the bug and the reason, but someone needs to squash it! Incidentally, a scale of 3000mmx3000mm needs to be applied to SU coloured faces, so textures don't need to be used for importing.

Secondly, I'm not sure posting to the roadmap, (a channel designed for the logging of new ideas) is the right one. This is a fundemental bug within the datasmith importer, not a lack of a feature. As I'd explained before, this used to work okay pre-datasmith.

Thanks!