Importing and editing your own textures

Importing a texture

A texture is used in a design any time a material with any kind of pattern is required, such as a worktop material or a set of tiles.

Textures can come from a variety of sources, photographs taken on a camera, a scanned image or an image from the internet for example.

To import a texture, begin by clicking on ‘Materials’ at the top of the screen.

The materials menu will only list out the components currently in use within this design - (Opening the materials menu before drawing a design will list every component available within this current room system).

Scroll through the list and select the component you wish to adjust.

The materials library component will also tell you what material is in use and what library it is using.

Once you have the chosen component, you can select a current material from one of the existing installed libraries.

From here, if you wish to create a new material; select the custom library.

Upon opening the custom library, you will have the ability to create a new material by clicking on the ‘New’ Button

From here you can click on the ‘Set Texture…’ button.

This will open up a windows file browser, from here you can choose an image saved anywhere on your computer.

From here, find the texture you would like to use.

In this example we are going to use a Wood Grain downloaded from Google.

Your imported texture can now be found in a folder called 'User'. You only need to import the texture once, and it can be used on any item, not just the item that was selected initially (in this case 'floor').

Once selected, using this menu you may change the material size at the bottom of the menu, along with the rotation and offset of this texture.

You may also specify a finish for this material through this menu by choosing a predefined finish from the dropdown below. You can also click on the 'Finish' tab and manually set up some of your own properties.

Once you have completed setting up your new material, you may choose to rename the material at the top of this menu by typing in a new name in the box at the top ‘Material Name’

Editing an Existing Texture

It is possible to make changes to a texture from within ArtiCAD. The built-in texture editor dialog allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast and orientation of the texture. It does not allow you to crop the texture - you will need to use a seperate image editor.

Begin by clicking on the 'Materials' at the top of the screen.

The materials menu will only list out the components currently in use within this design - (Opening the colours menu before drawing a design will list every component available within this current room system)

From the materials menu select the library and material you would like to adjust.

Once you have a material selected, click the ‘Edit…’ button below the material menu.

This will open up this menu, where you will be able to resize the material.

Adjust the brightness, contrast, hue, gamma and saturation of the image.

If you click the ‘Edit…’ button in this menu it brings up all these controls

Contrast: Effects the difference between the colour and brightness of a texture, increasing the contrast will increase the difference between the brightest and darkest areas of the texture.

Brightness: Brightness affects the overall brightness a texture, increasing how light the texture appears to be.

Saturation: Saturation affects the overall intensity of a colour, increasing the saturation in this image would intensify the orange Hue in this image. ‘Purity or strength of color, due to the absence of black, white or grey.’

Hue: Adjusting the Hue is the aspect of color which is described as 'red' or 'yellow' etc. It is one of the three main attributes of perceived color. Changing the hue will change the ‘orange’ to ‘purple’ in this image.

Gamma: Gamma allows you to adjust your texture if it looks washed out or too dark, in order to have it look more neutral ready to be used in a render.

Flip Vertically: Flip Vertically will flip your texture on a vertical axis if you wanted your flooring to be running in the opposite direction.

Flip Horizontally: Flip Horizontally will flip your texture along its horizontal axis in case you wanted your flooring to be running in the opposite direction.

Rotate 90°: Will rotate your texture clockwise 90° you may click this as many times as required in order to orient the texture correctly - This may be used in conjunction with flip horizontally or vertically.

Revert: Will reset the texture back to standard, in case you aren’t happy with the adjustments you have made.

Once you have adjusted the texture, click 'Ok' to save your changes. Your new texture will appear in the 'User' folder.

If you wish to discard your changes you can click 'Cancel'.

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