Black areas showing up in 2017 Layout viewport

Ah, and little internal birdies have told me about a transparent background issue on some Macs that can cause this.

What happens if you put some other background than pure white in your SketchUp view? What happens if you switch to a standard style?
To me this looks like you are using a Sketchy Edges -type style, and that the display is wreaking havoc where the transparent background of your viewport is meeting the transparent backgrounds of the images comprising your strokes. Are the images your style is using very small? Currently SU 2017 seems to have issues with very small images (2x2 pixels were discussed in another thread).

I am just guessing, probably wide off the mark.

Anssi

In the original two pics I posted layout viewports are using the standard “shaded with textures” style in hybrid mode.

In the following attachment the:
top left is “default” style/hybrid (only one with no black boxes)
top right is “hidden line”/hybrid
bottom left is"x-ray"/raster (still has tiny little black boxes)
bottom right “shaded w/ textures”/raster

So, I was wrong before when I said it wasn’t happening in raster mode too. Maybe it is something to do with a white background in the style. Not using sketchy edges anywhere. Images (do you mean viewports?) are on a 24x36 inch layout. Also, checking/unchecking the background box in layout - sketchup model - style does nothing. Boxes still there.

Another thing: in your original post you said that setting rendering and ourput resolution to High fixed this problem but made navigating the LO document slow. What if you leave the edit resolution to low and only rev up the Output resolution? I always set my LayOut files like that.

Anssi

Anssi,

I thought setting output res to high fixed the problem, but it only minimized it. The attached image is zoomed in on a pdf export that was set on high resolution output. Boxes are still there just smaller and a single page is now a 4mb file at the higher resolution. So I have huge pdf that has obvious flaws in it. Not acceptable.

I think you’re correct about the white background being the issue.

You could try setting the scene background to 254,254,254. That would probably be white for all practical purposes except viewport transparency.

Anssi

No luck there either. Changed background style color to all 254’s and updated style in layout. Nope. Captured with an off white background:

Hi folks,

I have the exact same problem. I use a 5k iMac which has a AMD Radeon R9 M395X built in and since SU 2017 I also have these black squares and boxes around my models. Whatever I do, they don’t disappear. It is extremely annoying because I need to export 72 scenes as an animation with transparent background and I can’t find out a setting whichs just works. Despite the PNG export is also not working anymore concerning transparent backgrounds. The are ALWAYS white plus the LOVELY BLACK BOXES around the model.

I really hope for quick solution for this. By the way, it is clearly a mac problem. My PC (working with a GTX 1070 AMP Extreme!) can export everything like I need it, but as we all know, PCs can’t export animations with transparent backgrounds. So I’m stucked again.

Cheers,
operatorOne

We have the same computer and graphics card. I went back to SU 2016, which was pretty annoying since I didn’t notice this issue until after I had saved several models in 2017 format. Having to switch them all back is a headache. Someone from the sketchup team asked for system info about this issue in another thread, which I sent to them in a PM, but they never replied concerning it.

have you set it in png export options, I just double checked and it’s working on my iMac with v17…

for export you can set the Antialiasing to 4 using Ruby Console found under the Window menu…

you need to paste this line into the ‘bottom’ text field and hit return…

Test.set_AA_method(4)

my tests show this has no effect on the display, but still works on exports…

it may help with the ‘black boxes’ as I don’t get them…

john

Which reminds me. When saving a layout file from 2017 format back to 2016 all the model viewports I had in hybrid mode reverted to raster in 2016 file. Had to change them all back one by one.

Hi,

thanks for the tips, but I had no success. I suggest it is the graphic card handling of macOS 10.12 Sierra. I tried to use SU 2016 and had exactly the same result. Black boxes and no transparent backgrounds. Sad :confounded:

operatorone

I’m having the same problem on my 5K iMac with AMD Radeon R9 M295X 4096 MB card running Sierra OS. Unacceptable for a new software release.

Same problem here. I was able to clear the back areas by changing the field of view/zoom factor. Went in one instance from 75 to 40 and that did the trick. But in another drawing that didn’t not help at all…

Hi guys, I just updated my Sketchup 2017 to 17.1.17 on my mac OS 10.12.1. The black boxes around the model disappeared, which I’m very happy about it. : grinning: Nevertheless I can’t get the transparent background to work when I export my model 2D to a PNG, which annoys me still a lot. Even when I choose a colored background – blue or something – I get an image with a white background. : cry: May be still an issue concerning the graphics driver or the render engine of SU17.

I’ve just downloaded and installed SketchUp 2017 17.1.173, but it’s not really helped me - the black squares and jagged edges are still there.

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that’s what happens when you open a transparent background image in software that uses white as a background…

e.g. in ‘Preview.app’…

john

That’s odd. :grin: When I try to open my transparent png in Photoshop I just have a white background and only one layer of course.

See:

What I did

Opened up the sketchup drawing then opened up styles and edited the current style, setting background, sky and ground to white, then saved.

Opened up my layout and updated the reference links.

The imported drawing still showed the black blocks, so I right clicked on the drawing within the layout and selected styles.
this showed two style options one with [1] next to it.
I selected this style that DID NOT have a tick next to it and this seemed to resolve the issue.
I had several instances of the same sketchup drawing on the layout and had to do it for each instance.
Some times I had to click back and forth between the two styles before it would work.

Im running sketchup 2017 on a new macbook pro with serria os x.

I think it could be due to transparent backgrounds, I moved a series of jobs over from my old macbook pro running 2015, where everything displayed fine and these had transparent backgrounds as I often overlay the imported drawing.

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