Hi, I am having an issue with a transition between 2 scenes to do a Solar Study on a building.
Scene 1 is a internal plan view under the roof line but the roof is still used to cast shadows at 7am
Scene 2 is the same but at 5pm.
When I transition between the 2 scenes the roof reappears until the 2nd scene is reached therefor am unable to see the shadow internally between the 2. I’m using Sketchup Pro 24
Any thoughts?
share your file. you lost me at “when I transition”.
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My goal is to create an internal Solar Study from morning to evening. I want the roof to be part of the study for shadow purpose but still see the internal layout of the building. I have a 10s transition between the morning scene and the evening scene.
What’s the best way to share. Trimble Connect?
I don’t think native SketchUp shadow engine will do this. There are renderers like V-Ray that will let you cut a section, yet show the shadows as cast by what’s hidden by the section cut. Not all renderers will do that however. Last I knew, SU Podium did not.
Thanks
Two workarounds for casting shadows from objects which are not visible.
1: Paint the roof geometry with a %71 opacity of any color, white works best. Anything below %70 does not cast shadows but above %71 does and is still transparent enough to be seen through. If you want to keep a ghosted image of the roof architecture while seeing the shadows cast from it on the building interior this is the go.
2: A slightly more complex trick but very useful to make objects “disappear” but still cast shadows is to apply a blank transparent .png material to an objects surfaces and to hide all it’s edges. This creates a completely invisible version of an object that still casts shadows. You will need to select all geometry concerned and then deselect faces, or switch to wireframe style to select only edges, then hide all edges. Then select all faces and apply the texture included here below. Depending on how your geometry is textured you may need to paint the backface texture too. This .skp looks like an empty file but there is a 10’ by 10’ square at the origin that is painted with a transparent .png and edges hidden, copy paste it into your model to make it’s texture available. Careful, don’t forget where you put it 
TransTexture.skp (666.4 KB)
oooh, I just noticed… file of the beast.
Here is a complex box truss casting shadows that is completely transparent.
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wetransfer ? that way it’s only online for 7 days, and you can remove the link whenever you want ?