An option to disable the SketchUP-Enscape material channel linking

Enscape Requests
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1

In my studio we’re experiencing a lot of trouble and increased, time consuming, file sizes to work with. The reason why we started with Enscape and why we liked it so much is starting to fade away. Now we are ending up with small residential projects that are easily going to 1,2gb which is insane. Not to mention the time it takes to adjust 1 single material.

we’re are paying money but cannot keep up with the new updates due to this file size problem and forced to stay with enscape 4.7

Submitted on AHA Ideas (ENSCAPE-I-1775).

2

Hi,

What you’re describing is not expected behavior, especially for small residential projects. File sizes in the range of ~1.2GB and noticeable slowdowns when adjusting materials point to something specific in the project setup rather than a general limitation of Enscape.

We’d be happy to take a closer look and support you in identifying the root cause. If you can share a sample project where you’re experiencing this, we can analyze it and provide concrete recommendations on what’s driving the file size and performance issues.

In many cases, these problems are linked to particular elements (e.g. geometry complexity, assets, textures, or project structure), and once identified, they can often be resolved.

Feel free to send over a small project file or let us know how best to proceed — we’ll help you get back to a smooth workflow.

Submitted on AHA Ideas.

3

Hi Dilyana,

Thank you for your reply. So i do think it has to do with the integration between sketchup 2025 and Enscape.
See my testcase below to explain what is happening:

The problem i’ve experiences was with SKP 2025 and enscape 4.13.

Upon searching for a solution/workaround i experienced the following.

i’ve tested 2 Possible solutions:

1: SKP2024 in combination with Enscape 4.13: I’ve modelled a square space with een sink design. I ended with a file size of 12.6mb

To test the difference(and problem) i’ve then copied the exact same file(geometry and textures) in SKP2025 with Enscape 4.13 and it trippled in size. 36,6MB. I then tried deleting the PBR maps in SKP. But it resulted in deleting it in Enscape.

So it became quite obivous it had to do with the material integration.

I’ve then tried to see if my conclusion was right and did the same test with the version of enscape were the material integration/connection wasn’t active.

2: SKP2025 in combination with Enscape 4.7:

I’ve again did a couple of tests.

test 1:

I copied the exact same geometry/textures from the SKP2024 into SKP2025 and it gave approx the same file size 12,7MB. After adding the PBR in enscape the file size remained the same. So in this case Enscape doesn’t add the PBR maps into the SKP File. So it keeps the file size lower. Than a scenario popped up where i could hopefully restore my previous projects and reducing the file size of those files so i did another test

test 2:

I opened the old SKP2025 file with 36MB(still containing the PBR info in the SKP file), deleted the PBR in SKP and the file again reduced to 12,7mb without deleting the PBR in Enscape.

Submitted on AHA Ideas by Wietse Kloostra.

4

Hi Dilyana,

Thank you for your reply. So i do think it has to do with the integration between sketchup 2025 and Enscape.
See my testcase below to explain what is happening:

The problem i’ve experiences was with SKP 2025 and enscape 4.13.

Upon searching for a solution/workaround i experienced the following.

i’ve tested 2 Possible solutions:

1: SKP2024 in combination with Enscape 4.13: I’ve modelled a square space with een sink design. I ended with a file size of 12.6mb

To test the difference(and problem) i’ve then copied the exact same file(geometry and textures) in SKP2025 with Enscape 4.13 and it trippled in size. 36,6MB. I then tried deleting the PBR maps in SKP. But it resulted in deleting it in Enscape.

So it became quite obivous it had to do with the material integration.

I’ve then tried to see if my conclusion was right and did the same test with the version of enscape were the material integration/connection wasn’t active.

2: SKP2025 in combination with Enscape 4.7:

I’ve again did a couple of tests.

test 1:

I copied the exact same geometry/textures from the SKP2024 into SKP2025 and it gave approx the same file size 12,7MB. After adding the PBR in enscape the file size remained the same. So in this case Enscape doesn’t add the PBR maps into the SKP File. So it keeps the file size lower. Than a scenario popped up where i could hopefully restore my previous projects and reducing the file size of those files so i did another test

test 2:

I opened the old SKP2025 file with 36MB(still containing the PBR info in the SKP file), deleted the PBR in SKP and the file again reduced to 12,7mb without deleting the PBR in Enscape.

Submitted on AHA Ideas by Wietse Kloostra.

5

Thank you for the detailed information. The team will check the described scenario and I will get back to you.

Submitted on AHA Ideas.

6

Hey Dilyana,

is there a response from the team?

Submitted on AHA Ideas by Wietse Kloostra.

7

Unfortunately they were actively working on the next release and still have not looked into the issue. It is in the To-do list.

Submitted on AHA Ideas.

8

Hello,

Is there any news on this? I can’t find much online. I had to switch from SKP 2024 to 2026 in March 2026. I immediately noticed lagged response time and file bloating, but due to work load I didn’t have much time to figure out why. This week I discovered on my own that the culprit appears to be Enscape and Sketchup 2026 PBR material integration.

I model in Sketchup and apply basic texturing. Materials are then tweaked and improved in Enscape. Since Enscape doesn’t imbed textures into the Sketchup file, all good. That was until I changed to SKP 2026. It appears that maps (reflection, bump, etc) from the Enscape material are somehow being loaded into the Sketchup PBR material, and thus subsequently being embedded into the Sketchup file I would assume.

In Sketchup there is an option to automatically enhance materials which I have deactivated. This actually doesn’t do anything. And to make it all worse, if I delete the normal map from the Sketchup PBR material, it deletes the map from the Enscape material! This is horrible.

I have absolutely no interest in Sketchup PBR materials and don’t use them in my workflow.

This bizarre and completely unnecessary integration (in my opinion) could perhaps be fixed by an option to disable the SKP PBR/ENSCAPE material integration. But this doesn’t seem to exist.

I now have extreme file bloating, ranging from 2.5x-9x bigger files than a Sketchup 2024 file (Im talking about saving the same file saved in 2026 format).

This extreme file bloating is causing a space issue (read: space costs money), longer loading times (for both Enscape and Sketchup), longer backup times, and very reduced response times compared to just a few weeks ago (read: longer times= higher costs). This has also resulted in a lot of confusion and frustration.

Both Sketchup and Enscape have been updated to the latest version to see if perhaps if was addressed or fixed, but no, it hasn’t been.

The whole appeal of Enscape with great results/time/response times has just completely disappeared. We have huge projects developed in Sketchup with Enscape and this poses enormous problems in the present and near future. This could seriously affect costs, quality, delivery times and responsiveness to client demands. Even more so we might be forced to find an alternative, which would also involve readapting many projects that are quite big (who pays for this time loss?).

Dilyana, you wrote to Wietse, “What you’re describing is not expected behavior, especially for small residential projects. File sizes in the range of ~1.2GB and noticeable slowdowns when adjusting materials point to something specific in the project setup rather than a general limitation of Enscape.” This doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident, since we are experiencing the same problem.

For me, this is a huge problem and seems that it should be addressed urgently. Unfortunately, I dont’t know if this is an Enscape or Sketchup issue, but since it is an apparent integration problem.

If there are solutions to these issues, please point me in the right direction. I have been frantically looking online and doing tests the past two days and haven’t found too much info or solutions to the problem.

Thank you

Submitted on AHA Ideas by Brendan Lynch.

9

Hey Brandon,

thank you for also addressing this issue.

the temporary solution I have is stick to Enscape 4.7 since after this version the PBR integration is active.

We are now able to keep the sizes reduced.

unfortunately we are paying for a program and services we are no longer enjoying and having benefits from.

if this issue isn’t getting adressed within the next update we are seriously considering moving on to another rendering software like D5 render.

Submitted on AHA Ideas by Wietse Kloostra.

10

dear dilyana,

we are wondering if your team is going to adres this issue. Since more people and companies are having this issue.

This a issue that needs serious fixing otherwise we are forced to look into alternatives. We’re paying a lot of money without having the benefits from new updates or not being able to use the new features.

Submitted on AHA Ideas by Wietse Kloostra.

12

AHA Ideas status: Pending.
Set during AHA Ideas to Discourse migration.