Sun Study - date, time, latitude and longitude
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I've had a request for a sun study on a project for a government agency which I produced using an animation from my SketchUp model and geolocation. They have asked for evidence that the latitude, longitude, date and time of day are correct so I have had to make do with clumsy screenshots of the settings used to produce the animation.
What I would like to suggest is an option within the export animation settings to include a banner across the bottom of the animation showing the date, time, latitude and longitude. And anything else that other users find relevant and useful.
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you could use a series or scenes to set the shadows, and unhide/hide a label for each scene. then use export - animate -- either jpegs or mp4 (or both). for the mp4 use show transitions setting in model info. for jpegs turn it off.
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@deanbuckeridge said:
They have asked for evidence that the latitude, longitude, date and time of day are correct so I have had to make do with clumsy screenshots of the settings used to produce the animation.
What version of SketchUp are you actually using? Your profile indicates a pre-2013 version. Is that true?
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@dave r said:
@deanbuckeridge said:
They have asked for evidence that the latitude, longitude, date and time of day are correct so I have had to make do with clumsy screenshots of the settings used to produce the animation.
What version of SketchUp are you actually using? Your profile indicates a pre-2013 version. Is that true?
No, I'm on the current 2023 version. It seems that I haven't updated my profile in a while!
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OK. That's helpful and thanks for updating your profile.
So in order to prove that the shadows are a reasonable representation of reality, perhaps you could geolocate a sample model at the offices of the government agency and show the shadows for the current date at a specific time. Maybe use a flag pole on the site so they can compare the image to what they see when they go out there and look at it.
Reminds me of a project I did for a client in Maine some years ago. I'm in Minnesota and at the time I was working on the project I'd never seen the site. The city folks wanted proof the dimensions I was giving them from the site were accurate. I created a simple drawing of their municipal building (which I had also never seen in person) and told them how long and deep it was. That convinced them and my client prevailed over a contractor who was providing extremely inaccurate pencil sketches.
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