Hello, I’ve modeled a couple of towers and on the balconies I have a strip of white semi-transparent glazing, on one tower the colored spandrel panel behind the balcony glazing shows much differently than the other tower. Not sure what is going on here?
I would like to show a photo of both towers - but I can’t see where to post this…
I would prefer the balcony glazing to read as per the first image.
I have used the same material with same transparency and those two elevations are both facing north…
Please help!
Thank you ad_1011 for the image upload assistance 
Can you set the face style to Monochrome and post the same view?
Hi DaveR, they aren’t exactly the same view - but they are views of the same balconies shown above.
Thank you kindly for your help!
That shows what I wanted to see. ALL of the blue faces are reversed. The white ones have the correct orientation. If you are painting the back faces when you paint the model, the fronts aren’t getting painted so they won’t show the same material. You should get in the habit of correcting face orientation you you always keep front faces out.
Haha! That simple eh? Silly me.
Thank you Dave! You just saved me pulling out my hair over this!
Cheers!
Happy to help.
For your next project, be vigilant and stay on top of those reversed faces. If you fix them as you go, they’ll cause you less trouble. For my default template I edited the back color to be a green I’d never use in my models. I find it easier to see than the default blue. In fact on my work laptop, the shaded front face color takes on a blue cast that looks much like the default back color which makes it difficult to discern.
I can see even just a few pixels of the green on my screen which makes it quick and easy to find.
Lesson learned - the hard way - unfortunately. I’ll have to spend the next couple of hours fixing the model 
But I will be using your much needed tip for all projects from here on out!
Depending upon how you created the model, it might not take all that long. You can select multiple faces before right clicking and choosing Reverse Faces or, if one face is correctly oriented, you might be able to right click on it and choose Orient Faces.
Another suggestion for the future is to do your modeling with the Monochrome face style active. Although adding materials makes it look cool, don’t do it until your modeling is at least mostly completed. Even after you have applied materials, go back to Monochrome for further modeling. This not only helps you keep tabs on face orientation, you’ll generally find computer performance is better because you the graphics card doesn’t have to process the textures.
You wouldn’t paint your house before properly prepping the surfaces. Think of it like that when you are modeling.
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Got it! I never knew there was such thing as ‘face orientation’ until now, or until I ran into an issue - and I’m always looking for better and more efficient ways to work.
Thanks again Dave, I’m sure you will be helping me out again in the future, you seem like a SketchUp master 
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Yeah, but most of the time, you would apply a base paint in the appropiate color…
Dave, some not so good news, I have reversed all the faces in both the two towers and balconies such that the entire model now reads white on monochrome, however when I go back to showing materials, the same issue is still there…any thoughts?
You had painted the back faces. Now you have to paint the front faces with the transparent material.
Yes, I did paint the front faces to the transparent white banding - and I tried painting the back faces a solid, a transparent, a default color however nothing made a difference.
What is most strange is that it appears fine on one tower, like the first image I posted but not on the other tower, and the floor levels including balconies are components used in both Towers - so essentially they should be the same and materials should act the same. It makes me wonder if it is something to do with the sun, or shading?
Any chance of seeing the SKP file? If you don’t want to share it publicly, send it in a private message or upload to Drop Box and send the link.
So I’ve figured it out! I had to cut out the colored panels and paste in place in a separate new file, then closed both files, then opened both files and cut/paste the colored panels from the one file into the original. Looks like it is an order of creation as to why sketchup was reading the transparency differently from one Tower to the next - as each step (copy & pasting) were different when creating the two Towers. BUT, I’m sure you probably knew this already
Thanks Dave for all your help!!
That sounds like more work than you should’ve need to use to get it done but it sounds like you got it sorted. I think there is a better way to do what you needed to do. It would be interesting to see your model.
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