Sun for shading (?)

SketchUp
1

Under “Shadow settings”, there is a “Use sun for shading” box to be checked.
Either checked or unchecked I don’t see any difference with the shadows. What is it for?
Thanks in advance.

2

With shadows on you won’t see the difference.
With shadows off you may notice the difference by how your geometry is receiving light: Either the sun or the camera light is used. If you have the sun directly behind the camera, the differens will hardly be noticed

p.s. if shadows is on you’ll use sun for shading anyway.

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3

This is an old thread but as a new user I’ve been playing around with shadows and found the UI for shadows sort of odd…however in a few minor ways.

  1. This isn’t really related to my main point but I found that show/hide icon (upper left) to be an odd way to turn shadows on. I was fumbling around for 10-15 minutes, then of course felt stupid once I realize that was the switch. …And yeah there are tooltips.

  2. Main Point: The ‘Use sun for shading’ checkbox. Based on your answer above, do you think how this is handled in the UI properly reflects the relationship of this feature to ‘use shadows’? As you say, ‘if shadows is on you’ll use sun for shading anyway.’ So, with this in mind, when shadows are on, shouldn’t either 1) The 'Use sun for shading checkbox be AUTOMATICALLY turned on or 2) Have it be turned on AND grayed out. (to show that there is no need to have the control be active.) Obviously it’s not a big deal but I’ve always felt that UI controls patterned after the way controls interact with each other makes an app easier to figure out and use.

4

1: You can also set a custom button in the toolbar to toggle shadows on and off.

2: I understand what you are saying. “Use sun for shading” is available and often used independently of the shadows when shadows are off, but yeah I can see that it makes sense to grey the text when shadows are on. But not to auto check, because if I leave the box ticked I want to know what default state I left the scene in weather shadows are on or off.

5

This video touched the Use Sun for SHading box and shows how it changes how the model looks, even without shadows.

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