Material Selector Plugin

[tdlogicclass]

Material Selector Plugin

Hi everyone,

I’m excited to share a new plugin for Sweet Home 3D:

Material Selector Plugin

The Material Selector Plugin is a powerful tool that allows you to quickly batch-replace materials on furniture items, saving a huge amount of time during design workflows.

Main Features

• Replace materials on multiple furniture items at once
• Apply textures from image files (JPG, PNG)
• Set real-world texture size and rotation
• Optional random texture offset for realism
• Apply solid colors to selected materials
• Adjust transparency for glass and special effects
• Control or preserve shininess for realistic finishes
• Drag & drop support for fast texture selection
• Full Undo / Redo integration

Smart Material Handling

The plugin includes a material tree that automatically groups materials by name, making it easy to:

• Navigate complex models
• Select and replace materials quickly
• Work efficiently with large scenes

Why use it?

If you’ve ever needed to:

Replace the same material across multiple objects
Quickly test different finishes
Apply textures with real-world scaling

This plugin makes the process fast and effortless.

Download

Plugin file:
https://sourceforge.net/p/sweethome3d/p ... 2D1.0.sh3p

Source code:
https://sourceforge.net/p/sweethome3d/p ... 20Code.zip


Video demonstration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SAUbmb3XO0

[tdlogicclass]

Hello everyone,

I am happy to announce the release of Material Selector Plugin v1.0.1.

This update is a significant step forward from the initial release, as it moves from simple material replacement to a full image processing engine. You can now customize your textures on the fly without needing external photo editors.

What’s New in 1.0.1:

1. Dynamic Grout Lines: You can now add grout lines to any texture directly. You have full control over the grout color and thickness (in pixels). Perfect for tiles and masonry!
2. Walls & Rooms Support: The plugin is no longer limited to furniture. You can now batch-replace materials for Walls (Left/Right side), Floors, Ceilings, and even Baseboards.
3. Advanced Transparency: A new slider allows you to set transparency from 0-100% specifically for image textures using alpha compositing.
4. Live Search Filter: A new real-time filter helps you find specific materials in the tree list instantly just by typing (e.g., "Wall").
5. Improved Undo/Redo: Better integration with Sweet Home 3D’s native system for all new material types.

Video Demonstration:
You can see the new features and the workflow in action here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivyxQ5p0W7o

Download:
You can find the latest version on SourceForge:
https://sourceforge.net/p/sweethome3d/p ... 1.0.1.sh3p

I hope you find these new features useful for your projects. Looking forward to your feedback and suggestions for future updates!

[Keet]

Looks very good but you should make use of the already available features in Sweet Home 3D.

The preview is good but it should be placed next to the current color/texture. Sometimes a material has an unrecognizable name so seeing what the current color/texture is when selected in the tree clears up what you have selected.

The browse dialog to select an image is missing the image preview. The default File Open dialog probably has a preview property that can be set to display an image in the selection dialog. Currently you don't see the image until you have selected it.

I set a texture to a side but it appeared upside down. So I started the plugin again with the same furniture and selected the same face. The set texture was gone (or at least is seemed so because there is no display of the current texture), so I had to browse again to the same image and now set the rotation to 180°. The previously set texture should have been preserved, after Apply and close. It also didn't remember the last used directory so I had to click through the whole path again.

Take a look at the Modify dialog for materials in the Modify furniture dialog. Textures are shown in the material list. Of course this is for a single furniture object but you get the idea.

Also important are the "Recent colors" and "Recent textures" lists displayed at the bottom when you change a color or texture. You can get these from the Preferences.xml file in the hidden Sweet Home 3D data directory. (recent* items, a .pref file is just an image.)
This list of the last 10-20 used colors or textures makes it easier to select a previously used one. Much faster than having to browse to a new texture file. If the user added a new texture image or color it should be added to the recent list so it also appears in Sweet Home 3D. Same for a newly used color. Sweet Home 3D should have functions to do this, both for retrieving the most recent list and for storing a new color/texture. If these are not public you can maybe use a get/set around it or as a last resort copy the code from the source and use that.

In itself it's a good plugin but it is missing essential integration with Sweet Home 3D and ease-of-use.
Display what is current and what is new, also show when a texture is scaled, shifted, or rotated. The user can only work with what he can see.