Importing into materials library

Is there a way to import images into the materials library? For example I want to put brick on the front of the house that is made by a local manufacturer. Can I take a pic of his sample and use it in my 3D drawing?

Yes. Depending on shadows, cropping, etc. it may look good, it may not. Try taking several pictures and then crop and adjust as needed. Load them into the SoftPlan folder where the program is loading on your computer. Usually, SoftPlan - 3D -Textures - Bitmaps - Folder of your choice (or create a new folder).

Yes to what Mark just wrote.  Also, you can use the textures (1,000's) at:  https://www.sketchup...xtureclub.com/  The high quality images will not work on SP unless it is a very small area.  But the low quality images equal SP best and sometimes you need to reduce the pixel size for those to work.  Combining this site and SP textures, I can usually find anything I need.  Please respect the terms of the site.  Lots of free stuff but for commercial use, it is nice to pay the small fee to keep this great site up and running.  

If you are creating your own custom textures because you may not be able to find an exact match in an existing materials library, the important thing is to take a picture of the surface as straight as possible, so it doesn't show a repeating pattern. Any minor adjustments can be made once you import your image into a program like Photoshop to make it a seamless texture. Youtube has a ton of tutorials on how to make seamless textures with an image since if you just take the original image and apply it to a surface, more than likely it will have a tiled effect that is more noticeable with more complex surfaces like brick. There are a bunch of other photo editing software (free ones too) that can do the same thing if you don't own Photoshop. This is the best way if you need to get a texture that resembles the manufacturer finish. I would double check texture libraries that may offer a close match.

Thanks that is all good info. To bad I don't have more time to play with 3D drawings!