We are hearing more and more cases where textures painted on faces are not rendering properly in Podium 1.5 and Podium 1.6. If you are getting unexpected results with texture renderings, chances are the issue is your texture is painted to the back side of a face and the back side is exposed. With Podium 1.5, the problem where back side faces could not be rendered was solved. However, there are some textures that are exceptions to this solution.

How to solve? If you have weird looking textures in your rendered image, use SketchUp to see if the textured face in questions is front or back side. If it is back side, reverse the face and reapply the textures to the front side of the face. Sound simple?

How can you tell which face is front side and which is back side? There are a couple of ways to find out.

SketchUp 6 has a nice tool that will turn off textures and display only the monochrome color of all the faces in the model. In SketchUp the normal or front side of a face is a light tan color and the back side is a darker, usually blue color. Using the monochrome icon in the Face Style tool bar, you can see which face is blue or back side. When you find the blue or back side faces, right click on them and use the Reverse Face option. You will have to reapply the texture to the front side face.

The other method is to right click on the face and pick Entity Info. You will see two image panes in the Entity Info box. The right side is the front side. The left is the back side. Which side is the texture on?