SketchUp 2026.2 Shadow Issues – Shadow Scattering & Cast Shadow Behavior Changes

Technical Problems SketchUp
,
1

Shadow Scattering / Artifacts in Section View

After updating to SketchUp 2026.2, I noticed unexpected shadow scattering/artifacts appearing in section views.

The issue appears as random fragmented shadow blocks or noisy shadow patches inside rooms and enclosed spaces, especially near openings and section cuts.

As shown in the image below, the artifacts appear at the positions marked by the red arrows.

Possible observations:

  • Happens in section/elevation scenes
  • More visible in interior or semi-enclosed spaces
  • Looks like shadow/light leakage or unstable shadow calculation
  • Did not happen in previous SketchUp versions

This creates visual noise and affects documentation quality significantly.

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Changed Behavior of “Cast Shadows” Toggle

Another issue is related to the Cast Shadows option.

Previous Behavior (older SketchUp versions)
When disabling Cast Shadows on a parent group/component:

  • All nested child groups/components also stopped casting shadows automatically.

This was very useful for controlling shadow behavior quickly in complex models.

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Current Behavior in SketchUp 2026.2
Now:

  • Disabling Cast Shadows on the parent group does not disable shadow casting for nested child groups/components.
  • Users must manually open the parent group and disable shadow casting one-by-one for every child object inside.

It breaks compatibility with previous workflow expectations.

2

In fact it looks very much like a bug in some very old SketchUp versions that was originally patched with a “shadow strings fix” extension.

3

Have you tried disabling “fast shadows” in the the Graphics settings ?

On the release note it is written that shadows may present artifacts around section cuts, among other issues.
And that in that case you should try to turn it off.

4

Confirmed. Disable Fast Shadows now solved all the problems. But now this option turn on as default, then the user must learn how to turn it off for their workflow still works as expected.

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5

I’m seeing similar artifacts in MacOS. No option to disable fast shadows there. Similar to old shadows inside the shadow volume.

6

True. If it doesn’t reliably work from start, it should probably be advertised as a feature in beta version feature that you can turn on - IF - you have performance issues with shadows.

I think many if not most user choose sketchup for the sake of simplicity. Unless chatGPT can pinpoint the problem for them, I doubt they will want to spend time troubleshooting or search the web to tweak settings… Let alone read release notes, or check the forum, which is in english only anyway…
So it wouldn’t be surprising to me if a ton of user will just live with broken shadows, or roll back to the previous version.

7

Thanks for this post/solution.

I have the same problem with many of our sun/shadow studies, which can be very annoying. So far, I have managed to reduce the “noise” by slightly adjusting the view for the “bird’s-eye view”. I will definitely try to turn off fast shadows next time!