Material artifacts , transparency

aroestenburg · 1 Mar 2011, 08:29

HI,

I have imported a .dae into Sketch UP from Microstation. The model is spatial located miles away from the origin... Viewing it is an issue.

I have tried to clean up the model with groups and components.

The models all appear transparent and there are occasional screen artifacts. Similar to the issue between perspective and parallel projection.

I have tried both camera alternatives and still the material (which has 100 opacity) is transparent.

Help!

I am trying to preserve the coordinates so the model can end up back in Google Earth.

Gaieus · 1 Mar 2011, 08:57

Adam, the isue obviously comes from this distance from the origin. You can do one thing however (please, read the additional notes below):

select all the model,
make it a component
right click > save as...
open the newly created file (which is now located at the origin) and work on it
when done, go back to the original model, right click again and "reload"

Additional notes:

For this, to work properly, you have to make sure that the axis origins of the individual groups/components are not miles away either. If they are, use this plugin to get them to the bounding boxes of the entities.
I still have doubts about the possibility and accuracy of the model in GE. SU has an orthogonal co-ordinate system while GE has a spherical one. This has very little difference when you are close to the origin but when you are miles away, the difference can already be considerable.
But let's see what it results...

aroestenburg · 2 Mar 2011, 03:03

Brilliant!, the model is workable now. I'll keep you posted about the success / failure of 'reloading' the model in the original scene. Then exporting to Google.

Thanks.