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    [Solved]Shadows acting funky

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    • thomthomT Offline
      thomthom
      last edited by

      @hellnbak said:

      Well, I can live with 99% opacity

      That's going to hurt performance. Transparency adds overhead to processing of the model in the viewport.

      Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
      List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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      • thomthomT Offline
        thomthom
        last edited by

        Have you tried without Hardware Acceleration? In case this is a graphic card / driver issue.
        What card and driver version do you have?

        Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
        List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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        • thomthomT Offline
          thomthom
          last edited by

          Ah! I know what this is!

          I actually wrote about this some time ago: http://www.thomthom.net/thoughts/2012/03/the-secrets-of-sketchups-materials/
          (Scroll down to Bug with Materials and Color Alpha Channel and see example and description of bug.)

          To fix all materials in your model, enter this one-liner in your Ruby Console:
          Sketchup.active_model.start_operation('Fix Materials',true);Sketchup.active_model.materials.each { |m| c=m.color.to_a; c[3]=255; m.color=*c; };Sketchup.active_model.commit_operation

          Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
          List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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          • thomthomT Offline
            thomthom
            last edited by

            Very nice model by the way! πŸ‘ πŸ‘

            Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
            List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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            • hellnbakH Offline
              hellnbak
              last edited by

              You the man!!!

              While I don't pretend to understand any of the reasoning behind it, it did the trick!

              You are now on my Xmas card list

              "Politicians are just like diapers -- they need to be changed often, and for the same reason"

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              • hellnbakH Offline
                hellnbak
                last edited by

                @tobobo said:

                Strangely when I open the skip the shadows work fine.

                Maybe I'm missing something

                Maybe you had already run ThomThom's miraculous fix?

                "Politicians are just like diapers -- they need to be changed often, and for the same reason"

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                • thomthomT Offline
                  thomthom
                  last edited by

                  @hellnbak said:

                  While I don't pretend to understand any of the reasoning behind it, it did the trick!

                  It's a bug in the quirky design of SketchUp materials.

                  A material has a Color property - and Color property contains RGBA info.
                  Materials normally ignore the A value of the colour and use the Alpha property of the Material itself.
                  However, for some reason, when the Color property has the alpha value set to 0 the object doesn't case a shadow. And sampling materials with the Sample Color from Screen tool can in some cases set the wrong A value for the Color property.
                  This is a bug I've reported to the SketchUp team.

                  Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                  List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                  • hellnbakH Offline
                    hellnbak
                    last edited by

                    @thomthom said:

                    @hellnbak said:

                    Well, I can live with 99% opacity

                    That's going to hurt performance. Transparency adds overhead to processing of the model in the viewport.

                    You mean that whenever I make a material transparent, even just a little transparent, it affects the processing of the model enough to hurt performance? Or did you say that just because the affected materials in this case pretty much involve the entire exterior and some of the interior of the model?

                    "Politicians are just like diapers -- they need to be changed often, and for the same reason"

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                    • thomthomT Offline
                      thomthom
                      last edited by

                      When a material is transparent the 3D render engine (SketchUp's viewport) need to perform more calculations in order to determine the colour of each pixel. As you see in the Styles setting you can set to Faster, Medium or Nicer. The better the slower. For max performance you can disable transparency all together. (I do that some times with heavy models with lots of glass or clip maps.)

                      Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                      List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                      • hellnbakH Offline
                        hellnbak
                        last edited by

                        Well, thanks again. And thanks to everyone who offered their advice and suggestions.

                        "Politicians are just like diapers -- they need to be changed often, and for the same reason"

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                        • Rich O BrienR Offline
                          Rich O Brien Moderator
                          last edited by

                          You need to set a template that uses as little resources as possible. Add eye-candy for export πŸ‘

                          Download the free D'oh Book for SketchUp πŸ“–

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                          • hellnbakH Offline
                            hellnbak
                            last edited by

                            @rich o brien said:

                            You need to set a template that uses as little resources as possible. Add eye-candy for export πŸ‘

                            Actually the computer I built a year or so ago seems to handle everything pretty well. Once in a while when moving a model the textures blank out for a few seconds, but if I run Purge (the plugin) it takes care of that. I've always wondered why Purge does that, even when nothing is actually purged. But then I also wonder how bread becomes toast πŸ˜•

                            "Politicians are just like diapers -- they need to be changed often, and for the same reason"

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                            • Rich O BrienR Offline
                              Rich O Brien Moderator
                              last edited by

                              Because it handles does not make it necessary. My modeling template/style is minus all the fluff that makes output look nice.

                              Download the free D'oh Book for SketchUp πŸ“–

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                              • andybotA Offline
                                andybot
                                last edited by

                                don't know why, but if I just change the saturation value by 1 step, and then change it back, it works fine. (for example color_A16 is H:169 - if I change it to 170 and back to 169, the shadows appear)

                                edit: works in any of the HSB, RGB, HLS modes with any number. didn't try the color wheel as there's no direct # control)

                                edit again: wow, didn't see all the info from thomthom (while I was slowly multitasking πŸ˜† ) - pretty sweet.

                                http://charlottesvillearchitecturalrendering.com/

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                                • Rich O BrienR Offline
                                  Rich O Brien Moderator
                                  last edited by

                                  Link Preview Image
                                  Speed Up SketchUp: Use Fast Styles

                                  Follow the SketchUpdate blog for SketchUp news, modeling tips and tricks, user stories and more.

                                  favicon

                                  (sketchupdate.blogspot.com)

                                  Download the free D'oh Book for SketchUp πŸ“–

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                                  • hellnbakH Offline
                                    hellnbak
                                    last edited by

                                    @rich o brien said:

                                    Because it handles does not make it necessary. My modeling template/style is minus all the fluff that makes output look nice.

                                    I'm interested, could you explain this a bit?

                                    "Politicians are just like diapers -- they need to be changed often, and for the same reason"

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                                    • hellnbakH Offline
                                      hellnbak
                                      last edited by

                                      Thanks Rich, some good information there, although the only one that applies to me is transparencies and I only use them for windshields. I do use Hidden Geometry a lot but I use a hot key to toggle it on and off as needed. Also, although I rarely use Scenes, I never noticed the options in Scene Properties, that could be very useful in the future.

                                      BTW, how the heck do I mark this thread as "SOLVED"? (didn't know I was supposed to do that until recently)

                                      "Politicians are just like diapers -- they need to be changed often, and for the same reason"

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                                      • Rich O BrienR Offline
                                        Rich O Brien Moderator
                                        last edited by

                                        @unknownuser said:

                                        how the heck do I mark this thread as "SOLVED"?

                                        Edit your first post title and add the [Solved] tag. I did it here but next time feel free πŸ˜‰

                                        Download the free D'oh Book for SketchUp πŸ“–

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                                        • GaieusG Offline
                                          Gaieus
                                          last edited by

                                          And it will also be obsolete on the new forums πŸ˜‰

                                          Gai...

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                                          • thomthomT Offline
                                            thomthom
                                            last edited by

                                            @gaieus said:

                                            And it will also be obsolete on the new forums πŸ˜‰

                                            http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/460000/images/_463071_nudge.jpg

                                            Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                                            List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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