Animating Sun and Shadow help

[jasonliu83]

How do you animate the movement of the sun in google sketchup so that during the play back, the shadow moves?
I was able to do it before, but after I tried with a new interior model that I created, during the play back, the inside of the room that i'm trying to animate lights up and darkens, but I don't see the shadow move anymore relative to the placement of the sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIrzJEHl_20

The youtube clip above is exactly what i'm trying to do. I did it before, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to do it again.

If someone has already posted an answer to this, please direct me to the thread.

[Gaieus]

Hello and welcome!

You need to create two scenes in SketchUp firs. (View > Animation > Add scene).

Now open your shadows dialog and set the day of the time to something in the morning in scene 1 then right click on the scene tab and "Update".

Go to your other scene, set the time to something afternoon/evening, right click and update.

Under View > Animation > Settings, you can set the scene transition time and such.

When done, go to File > Export > Animation (don't forget to play around with the options at the bottom right).

Now about the video you showed; it was not simply a SU animation but rendered in V-ray.

[honoluludesktop]

Gai, Sorry to ask, am too lazy to try and test, but will that cause the sun to jump from one position to another, or is the transition smooth? Thanks.

[Gaieus]

Nice and smooth.

[jasonliu83]

Thanks! It worked, but why is it that when I export it, it shows the sun light moving through my windows, but when I preview it within sketchup, the sun light is not shown, but only the walls and objects change shade?

[Gaieus]

Your file may be a bit complex. SU degrades some display features when animating things in the model (the same is when you orbit or pan while shadows are on - sometimes even faces go missing). This is a solution they initiated with SU 7.1. Most probably it is still better than unresponsive models.

[jasonliu83]

Thanks Gaieus!! You're a life saver!