Do you think it is possible to position the sun anywhere?
I mean independent of the native Sketchup geolocation and date/time functionality.
I understand that the sun is not actually a point of light but rather a plane of light shining from some direction to infinity (a ray or vector in geometry speak).
So another Another way of saying this, can you get the sun to project light along a vector you define?
I also understand that there are plugins such as _ shadow_projector.rb_ and sunposition.rb that do amazing things with shadows and geolocation date/time geometry. That is not what I am after.
What I think is needed is to access the underlying sun direction controls that the API at Class: Sketchup::ShadowInfo are controlling.
Within the current implementation, no, it is not possible. SketchUp wasn’t designed to be a renderer, so it doesn’t include much flexibility about placing lights to illuminate the geometry. The only choices are a light at the camera and the sun, and the sun position is calculated based on real-world location and time.
This might make a reasonable feature request (though who knows if it would get any priority), but for now your only option is to use a real renderer that includes lights.
I have many times considered making a feature request to this effect. I would suggest a check box for something like “Set Shadows by Geolocation” which, when checked is exactly how SU works now plus greyed out (can’t edit them manually) polar coordinates of the light source. When unchecked, those coordinates are editable, and the sun could be set at any arbitrary angle.
NO. Currently the sun can only be positioned at or above the horizon.
(Ie, sun shadowing does not work in the overnight hours.)
If you need special sun angles, you can place the model upon the prime meridian at the equator (setting the date to one of the equinoxes,) and rotate the model (or adjust the north angle) and set the elevation by adjusting the time (ie, for example sliding the time control manually.)
Very cool (and I still would love to know HOW to get/buy the tools you have created!) but not exactly sun position independent of geolocation date/time.
To me this is a major kink in the logic of a 3d modeling platform and a limitation of Sketchup that should be removed. A 3d model could be anything… a house, a cat, a bottle of shampoo. Certainly many cases rely on typical daylight angles for shadow effects but Sketchup should be good at representing 3d space, no matter where that space is… indoors, outer space, at the earth’s core.
My question arose from wanting to cast shadows on a ceiling. Sure, it would never happen in the real world but designers and those representing 3d ideas should be able to use shadow to represent 3d depth regardless of if it is “real world”.