Newbie problem - shadow artifact on objects in model view
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Hi, I'm building a massing model of my town's main street. When I finished before shutting down it looked fine, with normal shadows. On opening up today I have these strange jagged artifacts (see image). They are only in the model and don't print, but I want to use this to talk clients through options so I how I fix this?
I built a very quick model in a new file and it did not have this problem.
Nigel
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Try changing OpenGL settings for Hardware Acceleration and Fast Feedback to see if anything changes. You might need to try several combinations. Look in Window>Preferences>OpenGL.
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Could be a graphics card issue.
Have you updated the card's drivers?
Is it activated?
Have you try changing the hardware-acceleration, and fast-feedback options under SUp's Window>Preferences>OpenGL etc, to see what happens with different options selected ??[Dave R beat me to it but I'll post it as it's typed...]
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Hi TIG, Dave R - thanks
Yes, I went into SU's Prefs and sure enough all three boxes were ticked (funny thing tho' seeing as I had no probs before, altho' this is my first model which is sizeable - about 250 metres across, but only 1mb at the moment) , so I just left Fast Feedback on it's all good again. Video driver thinks it's up to date, but I'll follow that up more.
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Is that transparent material applied to the geometry? Looks like Z-Fighting...
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No transparent materials were in there, and what's strange is that this morning I put hardware acceleration on again and its fine - see pic (I'm pretty sure my video card - ATI mobility radeon HT 4500 series - is the problem, drivers say up to date.). I'd prefer HW accel on as work is much faster and smoother - thanks for your help. I'm probably working at the limits of my laptop.
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Yea, I'm using only nVidia. I got an ATI card for my office computer, great specs, but lots of glitches in OpenGL applications, such as SketchUp. So I demanded to get an nvidia card instead - no problems since.
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Work on your general modeling without shadows, without textures and without style-details like extensions etc... Also use layers to control the visibility of unneeded groups etc...
Have alternative Scene tabs with those things set 'on' and swap to them when you're done modeling your parts... This will minimize the load on your PC... -
The artifacts could also be caused by the overall size of the model, or its distance from the SU origin point. Note also that the changes you make in the OpenGL settings only come into effect after you have restarted SU.
Anssi
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Nvidia eh, I agree I've had a better run with those. Have to see if I can swap.
Model size, I'm trying to purge often and I find your (thomthom) cleanup³ really useful, it took my model from 2mb to 154k with no problems! Lots of rubbish from booleans etc. And thanks for the modelling tips Thom².
And yes, the model's about 3km from origin, and the model itself is about 250m across (I hope to get most of the downtown -about four streets like this-at least for the massing model, maybe if/when I detail I'll break it out to parts of streets only)
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@unearthed said:
And yes, the model's about 3km from origin
This opens up cans of worms! Always - always - keep the model around the origin.
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So what happens with large projects where a project (irrespective of megabittage) is very long,or is it better to avoid that sort of thing?
- maybe when I need that I'll just move on to using Rhino, or go back to my copy of Bricscad (highly functional Autocad-alike costing US500 or so)
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SketchUp got problems with very large lengths, and very small. SU's internal precision is 1/1000" - where any time you got edges around 1mm or less you are likely to experience geometry failing to be created and precision errors.
The workaround here is to scale geometry up 10,100 or 1000 times. Makes it a bit quirky to refer to units - but it's the only way to avoid it.On the other end of the scale, large lengths will also cause precision errors and you start to see the clipping bug - aprts of the geometry doesn't render as if there was an invisible section cut. You may also begin to see geometry jump and jitter around.
I do on occasion work with site models that's 1-2km in size. It does work, but if I go in to model details on some building I might see the camera clipping. To work around this I export the building to a separate component and work on that - afterwards reload it in the site-model.
But I always ensure the model is around the origin to reduce the level of precision errors. -
Thanks thomthom - the clipping bug was driving me nuts - I spent ages looking for what it was. And now I've moved back to origin everthing's fine.
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