SketchUp 2025 PBR material synchronisation with Enscape has degraded processing speed.

Enscape Host Applications Enscape for SketchUp
1

I am not sure whether this should be posted on the Enscape or SketchUp forum, but my guess is it’s an Enscape issue.

In version 4.8.0 Enscape introduced support for SketchUp Photoreal Materials (PBR). The update tries to synchronise the PBR channels of Enscape with the new PBR channels of SketchUp.
https://documentation.chaos.com/space/ERN/110067785/4.8.0+Windows#New

This has significantly slowed down processing speeds. Making adjustments to PBR values has become laggy and no longer smooth like it was before v4.8.0. It is impossible to have a flowless workflow. Every time I finetune PBR details I’m forced to wait until BOTH SketchUp and Enscape do their calculations and catch up with the changes. Both of the programs lag and freeze and in worst cases become unresponsive for several seconds. Has this been addressed?

Moreover, I’m not sure if this has been reported - the values don’t match 1:1 with SketchUp. Below some examples.

Height Maps
This channel synchornisation is a complete mess! Have a look at the following recording and note how laggy the programs have become because Enscape has to sync the channels with SketchUp. Adjusting value sliders in SketchUp affects Enscape, but changing the sliders in Enscape doesn’t affect SketchUp. What’s the logic behind this?

file.bin (20.1 MB)

  • SketchUp’s maxmum Normal Map value is 5.0. Enscape’s is 200.0. That’s 75% missing mathematical data, which creates inconsistencies! Has this been discussed with the people from Trimble?
  • Adjusting Normal map slider in Enscape does not change the slider in SketchUp. Adjusting the same slider in SketchUp changes the Normal map slider in Enscape (with extreme lags).
  • Pressing on the checkmark button in the SketchUp Normal map section merely turns off the Normal map in SketchUp but this causes the texture in the Enscape channel to be deleted.
  • Deleting the Normal map from the SketchUp channel ALSO deletes the Normal map from Enscape. So basically 2 buttons cause the exact same result in Enscape.
  • Deleting the Normal map from the Enscape channel does not delete the texture from the SketchUp channel.

Reflection Maps

  • Adjusting Roughness slider in SketchUp also adjusts Roughness slider in Enscape. But adjusting the slider in Enscape doens’t affect SketchUp.
  • Adding a Roughness map to the Enscape channel does not add the same map to the SketchUp channel. But if you add a Roughness map to the SketchUp channel, it automatically is added in Enscape.
  • Deleted the added map from the SketchUp channel also deletes it from Enscape. Deleting the channel from Enscape does not delete it from SketchUp.
  • Pressing on the checkmark in SketchUp turns off the Roughness effect but keeps the map in the SketchUp channel. But the same checkmark deletes the channel from Enscape completely.

Metallic Slider

  • If the checkmark box under SketchUp Metalness channel is unchecked, adjusting the slider in Enscape does not affec the slider in SketchUp.
  • Turning on the checkmark, and adjusting the slider in SketchUp also adjusts the slider in Enscape. But adjusting the slider in Enscape does not affect SketchUp.

For the record, “Automatically Enhance Materials” is turned off in SketchUp:

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If I may offer constructive criticism, this was an organizational fiasco to start supporting this new SketchUp feature without truly working on the framework behind the scenes! AT LEAST there should be a setting in Enscape, that allows the user to decide themselves whether they want the SketchUp and Enscape material channels to sync or not.

  • Normal Map unit of measurement must be made consistent across both programs. Whether SketchUp changes it to 200.0% or Enscape changes it to 5.0 or both come to a mutual agreement and ditch their units and settle on 100.0% is up to them.
  • Slider changes in one program MUST affect the other program.
  • Pressing x in Enscape channel or the trashcan icon in SketchUp channel must remove the channel from BOTH programs.
  • Adding a map in one program must add the same map to the other program.
  • The checkmark in the SketchUp channels UI must be removed, it is redundant. If the user wants to keep a channel map but nulify its effect, the user should put the slider on 0% (like in Enscape).
  • The units of measurement across all channels should match 1:1. Advising to adopt 100.0% as default starting value across all channels. .0 decimal is important to allow the user to go 8 times deep into the number without introducing any mathematical rounding: 100% > 50% > 25% > 12**.5**%. This is exponential binary growth algorithm (1 > 2 > 4 > 8 > 16 > 32 > 64), used by many 3D Artists in the Design process to produce consistent and coherent results.
  • SketchUp needs to allow individual channel map transformations, independent from the main Albedo X and Y sizes. (Enscape already allows this).
  • SketchUp needs to start supporting Opacity map, similar to Enscape.
  • Enscape needs to start supporting Ambient Occlusion map, similar to SketchUp.

This new support for SketchUp Photoreal materials has completely messed up our design and rendering workflow. Our team is struggling with speed, value inconsistencies, occasional unresponsiveness, missing materials and more. Please forward this to your developers @Demian_Gutberlet . Our company is not satisfied with the recent quality of Enscape features. There are year-long bugs which to this day remain unresolved, and now we have to deal with this… Thank you.
file.bin (6.45 MB)

2

Lets make this topic trending.

In my studio we’re also 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.

Please Enscape, team up with SketchUp and bring back the old workflow or give us the option to use the old style.

It would be a shame to look for different alternatives or third parties rendering developers. If this isn’t solved quickly the search is closer than we want it to be.

Thanks

3

Only seeing @ViggoPaulman post now, it explains a lot as to why I ‘feel’ things are slower than when I used SU/Ens a year ago even though I’m now using considerably faster hardware.

I get why linking the new SU material channel’s to Enscape is a good move for occasional Enscape users but for us who use SU to build and Enscape to present/render it’s dragging the process of creating/tuning materials into the ground.

I played with SU’s new PBR materials/visual setting when they came out but quickly decided they added nothing to MY workflow and stuck with the std view modes.

An option to disable the SU-Enscape channel linking is really really REALLY needed.

4

So after a lot of frustrations during the finalisation of a project i decided to discover a temporary work around.

Maybe this will help you guys as wel.

i’ve tested 2 Possible solutions:

1: SKP2024 in combination with Enscape 4.13: Started with a file size of 12.6mb

To test the difference i’ve then copied the exact same file in SKP2025 with Enscape 4.13 and it trippled in size. 36,6MB. But deleting the PBR maps in SKP resulting in deleting it in Enscape.

So switching back to SKP 2024 could be sollution 1. But in my case i’ve lost all of my installed plugins and settings and some faults with Libfredo plugins popped up. so i’ve came up with option 2

2: SKP2025 in combination with Enscape 4.7:

I’ve again did a couple of tests.

test 1 where i copied the exact same geometry 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.

For me this feels as the workaround for the upcomming period untill the make some noticable changes in the upcomming versions.

I’ll keep you updated if there are some changes/errors i come across working with Enscape 4.7

Wietse

5

@Paul_Russam @KloostraW thank you for your inputs guys.
It has been almost 9 months since I made this report. Enscape has released over 10 incremental software updates since then but none of them addressed this huge issue.

If anyone is on the Enscape Idea Portal, pleae go vote for my report, to have this fixed asap: Option to disable syncing Enscape | Chaos Enscape Ideas Portal

To this day we are stuck with SketchUp 2024, while keeping our Enscape version updated, because that’s the only way to ensure PBR materials between SketchUp and Enscape don’t sync and ruin performance and texture values. The problem is that SketchUp 2024 is ourdated, as 2026 has refined the new engine to boast better performance.

Soon Enscape will stop covering SketchUp 2024 (they stopped suppoting 2023 in their latest upgrade). If this problem remains unchanged, we are seriously considering keeping SketchUp but moving our rendering part of the job to Blender at this point.