Thanks for the answers. The trick with a transparant .png is useful but not for my problem. I cannot use a transparant .png texture because the plane already has a texture on it (the tree). So I cannot make the object transparant.

Any other trick which could help?

I would very much like to see the manual rotatable north arrow back in the free version again.

It used to be there up till Sketchup 8 but now suddenly you have to import a Google maps plan to get the sun position accurate. The problem is that when you rotate the imported google map, it won't rotate the sun so you have to rotate your model instead. Having done this all rectangles and other stuff I make after rotating the whole model are not parallel to the model. This means having to rotate the new objects manually after creation which takes time.

But maybe I just don't know about a simple trick. Anyone has a solution without having to buy the pro version?

Thanks.

Hi there,

I am wondering if it is possible to show shadows without showing the objects which cause them.

I need the shadow of a tree which I make by using a tree texture on a plane (in Vray I switch on 'use color texture as transparancy'). The problem is to get the shadow right, the plane needs to face the sun as much as possible. This position facing the sun is in conflict with the view of the camera so in the render I look at an oblique angle to the tree which makes it look strange. I thought to solve this by using 2 planes with the tree. One invisble facing the sun to create the right shadow and one facing the camera without creating a shadow. But I can't get the shadow to render without the object which is causing it.

Anyone knows how to solve this?

Thanks!