shadow color (through translucent material)

[bigvtapple]

I've been looking for a way to represent trees on a site plan model in a simple way that a) represents trees well, b) doesn't bog down sketchup with lots of geometry, c) has a minimal cost (rendering times), and most importantly d) represents trees well. i found a solution i like but i'm running into an issue.

these trees are transparent geodesic spheres painted with a translucent green on the font and back of the faces.

rendering issues2.jpg (164.67 KiB) Viewed 9608 times

does anyone know a way to retain the green transparency (to create "ghosted" trees) yet make the cast shadows gray or black (match the other shadows)?

[Fletch]

The fact the shadow is colored is called 'caustics'. You are the very first person to ever complain they GOT caustics... most ask how to get them.

Please try this :>: "Easy presets WITHOUT CAUSTICS" package of presets that should do what you want. It eliminates caustics, and results in non-colored shadows. A bit of color will still come thru because of the translucency. We can eliminate those as well for you if you need that.

[bigvtapple]

hmmmm, no apparent change. the shadows are just as green as before. the nocaustics presets were unzipped correctly and the render was run on the LOW+ setting instead of exterior progressive (what i used before). can we try eliminating all the color or am i missing an additional setting?

[Fletch]

please provide a screenshot of your material settings

[bigvtapple]

rendering issues5.jpg (247.02 KiB) Viewed 9572 times

so the boss decided he really liked the opaque trees, which i def agree with. unfortunately that means i'm losing my place as the first ever who needed to remove caustics.
i'm still uploading the settings in case you're still trying to figure out what was going on, but don't worry about it otherwise. thanks for your help fletch. below are the opaque trees. i'm gonna churn out a high res image tonight for a board.

oh and the geodesic domes were switched to spheres this afternoon as well~

merry christmas7.jpg (115.57 KiB) Viewed 9563 times

[Fletch]

hmm...
well, glad you got it sorted.
I think the opaque trees will communicate better to the client.
I think finding a better site tree sounds like a good hobby to pick up.

[bigvtapple]

Here's what I came up with~

site model finalb.jpg (518.95 KiB) Viewed 9466 times

comments and critiques are welcome!

[Fletch]

better!
now you could apply a bump map to get some texture on them. You will want to use UVtools by Whaat or UV Toolkit (1.0.0) by Thom Thom to get the bump map on there spherically... so it will look decent.

be sure to place the center of the 'ball' at the origin point of SU before using the UVtools by Whaat for mapping the bump spherically...

let us know if you need more info.

Here's :>: how to use a color in SketchUp, but the bump in Twilight.

[Gaieus]

You could even map a semi-transparent (kind of) tree image around a shape like that and have some still abstract but a bit more tree-like appearance of them

Here is a quick and (mind you very) dirty example just to demonstrate the concept:

Tree.jpg (94.44 KiB) Viewed 9376 times

I have painted the back face of the bushy part transparent in SU so that you can "see through" in SU, too, although this would be unnecessary in Twilight as the texture on the front face rules anyway. Also, though the (quickly edited) image is rather poor quality, it is a bit heavy.

[bigvtapple]

thanks guys,

fletch, the bump map is going to be my next step. i'm rendering a lot of brick buildings where that will be helpful. i think it will help the trees out as well.

gai, i'm going to experiment with that idea in the following weeks. it definitely looks like it could be useful.

when i have more to show i'll post it...