'sun eye' perspective views
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Hi All,
Quick question which I am trying to find an answer for.
I need to prepare some 'suns eye perspectives' to analyze the solar penetration into rooms/open area of houses. These would preferably be in parallel projection and coordinated to the location of the sites in Australia.
The reason behind these is they give a more accurate depiction of what is in shade (because shade/shadow is not visible) and where the light hits. They are becoming more common and a very important part of planning laws in Sydney, Australia.
There is a plugin which maps the trajectory/angle of the sun at different times in the say, and places them as points, however I need to be able to snap the camera to the exact angle, to 'see' what the sun sees.
The only program I know which can do this at the the moment is autodesk 3ds max. If anyone knows a method of getting sketchup to do something similar, it would be greatly appreciated!
Look forward to hearing from you!
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Set your Model's Location [Geo-locate or enter Long/Lat etc manually to set it in Australia (or wherever)].
Use the Shadow-Settings to set the dates/times you want.
Save each of these dates/times as individual Scene Tabs as you go - perhaps naming them with the date/time for ease of reference later.
Change to one of the Scenes.
Copy/Paste this code into the Ruby Console + <enter>m=Sketchup.active_model;v=m.shadow_info["SunDirection"];t=m.bounds.center;e=t.offset(v);m.active_view.camera.set(e,t,Z_AXIS,false);m.active_view.zoom_extentsThe view will be reset to look from the sun, towards the center of the model's bounds, with a parallel-projection camera [i.e. no-perspective] and then it zooms extents to show all of the model.
Right-click to Update that Scene Tab, to save these new camera details.
Repeat for each Scene Tab in turn...
You can adjust the amount of the model seen in the view using 'zoom' in/out - don't use 'orbit' etc as this will mess up the view angle.
Finally you have a set of Scene Tabs each looking at the model from the sun at different times/dates...
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Drozzy,
Could you post an example? I am not following...once you have the location and the time of day set, wouldn't the shadows depict the areas out of the sun?
Cheers.
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Hi,
Sorry I wouldn't know the answer, but I am interested in the technique and the protocol. In terms of being required, how is the result analyzed? Are you saying that jurisdictions in Australia require you to submit 3d pictures from specific sun angles? Is there a way of measuring the amount of the resulting sun penetration from this? Here in California "shading" is analyzed by basic overhang information (admittedly inaccurate)and shading properties of glazing etc. Where can one find out about this methodology?
It's wonderful SU ruby can provide such solutions (with a little help from our friends).
Regards,
Peter -
Thanks TIG - that's exactly what I was after. The existing tool that i found was 'sunview' within the SUNTOOLS 2.0 plugin, which also works.
pbacot - Here in Australia a lot of councils/jurisdictions will ask for these because traditional 'plan view' shadow diagrams arent particularly useful in winter when the sun is low, as the shadow may be on the ground but not necessarily overshadowing a wall or opening completely.
We also use it commonly for the available sunlight within multi level residential developments, as for each council there is a certain mandatory amount of sunlight required into a room for it to be considered habitable.
Thankyou all for your help, this is wonderful!
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Hi,
where can I download the "Suntools V2" plugin?
I also want to prepare pictures from "suns eye perspective" to analyze the solar radiation on the different surfaces of my building.
Thanks in advance for your help.
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