Thanks for the insight!
I understand, that’s indeed something I can’t evaluate with precision, if there’s no suitable (time-wise) rendering strategy to perform the task, that’s of course something much more unlikely to happen.
In that scenario, the only solutions could probably be:
- a “coarseness” switch to tweak performance, i.e. cast rays every 5/10 px, seeking the right balance to make it bearable and having not dramatically jagged shadows
- a native “not-realtime” rendering option which is something that would make little sense in the SketchUp package, given the amount of available options already out there
However, given how high-poly models already slow down the system, perhaps that would be something to consider anyway (i.e. some graphic cards might not prefer using a high-poly tree VS. using a 2D tree with alpha).
I really like the kind of output you can get with native rendering (and also the fact you don’t have to put another handful of work to tweak materials etc. and get the “perfect” render) but I reckon the limited appeal of this request among pro-users likely using external rendering engines and thus circumventing this issue.
Guess as other feature requests, this will vanish into “shadows” 