Global Control of Shadows with many scenes
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In large complex models it would be useful in particular to be able to Globally turn off shadows in one; more; or ALL scenes (but without affecting individual scene shadow settings)without having to select each scene, and then wait for the scene to be fully rendered with shadows before you can turn the shadows off. This seems to be my biggest performance issue with sketchup, especially when tweaking many scenes ready for final animation export.
Am I being stupid, is there already a method/plugin for doing this?
I have models and animations which in the final output need shadows on, but for working and tweaking things (especially when setting up scene transitions/flighpaths etc) the wait for the scene to be fully redrawn is frustrating. What do you think? Possible/Not possible.
Thanks
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So your problem is that in Scene 01 the sun might be at 2pm and in Scene 02 it might be 9am but you only want to show the shadows at the end?
My first thought would be a workflow issue - ie. wait to set your shadow settings until the end. That's not always feasible (sometimes revisions don't come up until after you're done with the shadows), but it's 1 thing to think about.
Another idea if you're not messing with your scenes at all would be to save a copy of your file (Scenes.skp) and delete/purge everything out of it leaving only your scenes. Going back to the original file you can turn off shadows, open the Scenes dialogue, select all the scenes, and uncheck Shadow Settings. Then when you're ready for the final images you copy your whole model and paste-in-place into your Scenes.skp file.
Depending on how many scenes you have, it may just be as fast/easy to go to each scene and turn off the shadows (and/or get into the habit of always turning them off before saving the scene). That way the settings will be saved but when you go to that scene the shadows will be off. When you do your finals, just go to your scene and turn the shadows on.
-Brodie
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I tend to not save shadow settings with my "camera" scenes. So when I got from scene to scene, it leaves the shadows how I have them set at that moment. Then I have a couple of scenes that just change the shadow settings, but not camera locations. So I can go from scene in whatever shadow mode I have set. And just click a "Shadow" scene to change from morning sun to afternoon sun, to no sun, etc.
And its easy to change the settings on multiple scenes at a time. Use the scene manager and select multiple scenes using the shift or ctrl key. Then deslect the shadowsetting and it will deselect it on all selected scenes. Or if you want to just change the current shadows setting on all scenes, then adjust the shadows how you want it, then select all desired scenes, and click update and in the pop up window, select ONLY shadow settings and it will update just the shadows settings of all selected scenes.
Scenes are incredibly useful for model management like this. I could do a quick video if my explanation was confusing.
Chris
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