Texture Editing and Layering

The texture editing tool has two modes to work with, Overview and Edit Mode.

Overview: the user has access only to the parameters that have been modified while hiding the rest.
Edit: The Edit mode displays all the available parameters for bitmap editing like Texture Properties, Tonemapping and Coordinates. Any parameter changed here will be displayed in the Overview Mode.

Editing a Bitmap

By default, the Thea Material editor is in Overview Mode, displaying only the path to the file and any parameter that has been modified allowing you to have quick access to the most used ones. To start editing the bitmap, click on the hamburger icon and select Edit Mode.

Texture Properties

Projection: this option helps the user select the projection needed for the selected texture. From the drop down list that appears by pressing the down arrow, a projection can be selected among: UV, Cubic, Cylindrical, Spherical, Flat, Front, Shrink Wrap, Camera Map, Cubic (Centered) and Flat (Centered).
Channel: Two main channels exist for a texture, the RGB channel and the Alpha channel.
Repeat: When enabled, it forces the bitmap texture to tile in all directions.

Tonemapping

Invert: this option, inverts all the colors of the texture to their complemented colors.
Gamma: user can edit here the Gamma value of the selected texture. These values range from ‐100% to 100%. In the next images, we see these values for the selected texture and the way they affect its final appearance.
Red/Green/Blue Shift: You can increase/decrease a texture color value to correct its tone.
Saturation: user can change from here a texture saturation, by giving it values from ‐100% to 100%.
Brightness: another feature that affects a texture tone is the brightness. Once again, values range between ‐100% and 100%. Brightness set to ‐100% makes the image total black.
Contrast: user can specify here the value of contrast that the texture will have.
Clamp Min and Max: from these two options, user can specify the minimum and maximum clamp of the selected texture accordingly. RGB colors range normally from 0 to 255. By setting for example minimum clamp 20%, the colors that their RGB values are less than around 51, will be “cut” and get this value. By increasing minimum clamp percentage, image turn to be whiter, while by decreasing the maximum clamp percentage, image is getting darker colors. Decreasing the maximum percentage and increasing the minimum on the same time, textures tend to appear grayer, as gray color has RGV values around in the middle of the 256 colors (128, 128, 128).

Coordinates

Offset X and Y: Offsets the bitmap over the X and Y axis.
Spatial Size (X and Y): Spatial Size is used to correctly account for scaling when changing from UV to Cubic coordinates, while UV Scaling affects the scaling once UV projection is used.
UV Scale X and Y: Scales the bitmap over the X and Y axis.
Rotation (deg): Rotates the UV coordinates.

Coordinates / UV Randomizer

• Indexing: Defines the way the UV Randomization works
  • UV Tile - Randomizes the tiling of the texture
  • Instance - Applies randomization to SketchUp Groups/Components
  • Proxy - Applies randomization to external Models (Thea Proxies)
• Offset X/Y Range: Defines the offset randomization for X and Y
• Scale X/Y Range: Defines the scale randomization for X and Y
• Rotation Range: Defines the rotation randomization
• Rotation Step: Define the steps for the rotation randomization. If for example we set this value to 90, Thea will randomly rotate the texture by 90 degrees (e.g. marble tiles)