a strange problem with lights and shadows...

[trad3mark]

Hello all!
I'm working on a scene for my final project of my B. Sc. (yay!!) and it's going excellently so far. My textures are all working great, no problems with reflections or displacement etc etc.

However, I started working through the lighting today. there's only 3 lights in the scheme; 2 omni-lights for lamps, and 1 rectangular light to get a sort of fire-effect. They look great, however, they're presenting a very unusual problem.

When i have the lights hidden or removed from the scene, the shadows from the sun render correctly. However, when the lights are not hidden, the shadows / sun doesn't render at all. The only shadows are the ones coming from the omnilight/rectangular light.

Any ideas?

my handup is wednesday, so i've some time to fix this yet!

cheers all,
N

[dkendig]

Re: a strange problem with lights and shadows...

SketchUp window->Window->Shading->Use Sun for shading

If you don't have that checkbox checked, then the only reason sun light should appear in your scene, is because you have default lights enabled in your render options.

[trad3mark]

Re: a strange problem with lights and shadows...

so if i want both, do i leave that checked?

I want to keep the sun on, but have the lamps on too like...

[dkendig]

Re: a strange problem with lights and shadows...

Right, you want to check this checkbox if you want to have the sun and other lights in your scene. Keep in mind though, if the Sun is illuminating your scene, you're probably not going to be able to see any light output from a normal rect or omni light, they're going to need to be a lot brighter if they hope to compete with the sun.

[trad3mark]

Re: a strange problem with lights and shadows...

great. thanks a million dkendig!

[dkendig]

Re: a strange problem with lights and shadows...

Oh also, in your Environment Options, you need to make sure you're not using a TexSky that uses a sun.