Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Chapter 5 Rendering in SketchUp
Sun
A scene that is illuminated by the sun primarily allows you to evaluate the interplay of shadows
and geometry at any given day and time and at any location on the earth. Set these
visuals in SketchUp’s Shadows window. You can use them to easily create shadow studies
that evaluate a building’s overhangs and the reflecting properties of materials to add to the
general illumination of a room, for example. It can often be useful to have the ability to create
a rendered animation of sunlight and shadows over the course of a day. (See Figure 5.40.)
Figure 5.40: Solar studies on shading devices and windows using sun illumination and physical sky
If you own SketchUp Pro, you can adjust the north direction in your
model by using the tools on the Solar North toolbar.
Use either the graphical (second button from the left) or the numerical
(third button) method to adjust the north direction in your model.
TIP
While this is obviously useful for architectural visualization, using the sun can be practical
for many other uses, too—for example, to simply bring out detail in a model when rendering
it. The sun is also a convenient default light source over which you have full control simply by
changing the time and day sliders in SketchUp’s Shadows window. Figure 5.41 illustrates a
case where the flat sun angle was used to illuminate the model and bring out the shadows
on the front of the Notre Dame building model.
When creating renderings using the sun, it is important to remember that the real sun’s
shadows are not as crisply outlined as they are in SketchUp. It is therefore important to give
them a realistic “fuzziness” around the edges (see Figure 5.42).
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