Aligning the Sun in SketchUp Accurately :: SketchUp 3D Rendering Tutorials by SketchUpArtists

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Aligning the Sun in SketchUp Accurately

Brian Lockyear is a computational designer in Portland, Oregon, using and developing sustainable

design tools for architecture. He has a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Washington,

and a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Oregon. He has a passion for where,

when and how the sun enters a space. As an artist, Brians primary medium has been printmaking.

He used the SketchUp renderings of the Portland Gas & Coke and twelve west buildings to create a

series of fine art prints. In this tutorial Brian takes us through the steps he uses to align the sun.

I admit it, I obsess about sun angles. It is my inner mathematician colliding with my inner architect. I

love how traditional architectural elevations rendered in the Beaux Arts style provided shadows

showing the depth and relief of the faade. This technique is particularly effective at showing-off

historic buildings such as Portlands 1913 Gas and Coke Company Building (Figure 2), however, it

also works for modern, low relief buildings like Portlands twelve west by ZGF Architects (Figure 3).

To develop these two images I used a parallel projection in SketchUp with my view aligned to the

buildings front, and the shadows set to cast precisely from 45 degrees to the right and 45 degrees

above the ground. With this classic orientation, a shadow that appears at 45 degrees on the

buildings face now reflects an objects edge protruding orthogonally from it. The length of the

shadow gives a good indication of the size of the object as well. The same technique may also be

used to give depth clues in section study as shown in Figure 4.

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Aligning the Sun in SketchUp Accurately :: SketchUp 3D Rendering Tutorials by SketchUpArtists

http://www.sketchupartists.org/tutorials/sketchup-and-advanced-modeling/aligning-the-sun-in-sketchup-accurately/[26-02-2014 23:47:19]

Fig 2: The face of Portlands 1913 Gas & Coke Building takes on a wonderful Gothic air.

Direct rendering engines, such as the one built into SketchUp, are great for generating the clean

crisp shadows required for these images. But it is difficult to find the right dates and times to position

the sun at precisely the angles needed to cast the desired shadows. SketchUp does not provide for

manipulation of the sun position directly as can be done in Rhino. (Kudos to them!) And while you

can use the date and time sliders to move the suns position around until you get something that

looks good, it is difficult to get it just right. Furthermore, once the suns position is adjusted for one

elevation, how do you expose successive faces of the building for the others?

Figure 3: Shadows cast across the face of Portland's Twelve|West.

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Aligning the Sun in SketchUp Accurately :: SketchUp 3D Rendering Tutorials by SketchUpArtists

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Figure 4: Simple floor plan study using section cut & shadows cast by vertical wall elements.

The solution is to use a technique from traditional drafting as described in C. Leslie Martins 1952

book, Architectural Graphics. In it, Martin illustrated the use of a simple cube-shaped shadow box

to determine where shadows should be drawn. In SketchUp the object can be used to dial in exactly

the location, date and time required to cast perfect aligned shadows.

Creating the box in SketchUp is simple. Starting at the origin, extrude a cube of whatever size and

units are easy to see in your model, say 10 x 10 x 10. Zoom in and rotate your view so that you are

looking down and towards the positive X and Y axes. Next, shift and single click to select the three

faces all adjacent to one another that you can see, which are the front, top and left faces of the box.

Be careful to select only the faces and not their corresponding edges. Finally, delete the faces to

leave only the back faces and the crosshair formed by the three bare edges. Turn on shadows

under the View menu and in the Windows >Shadows popup window, enable the checkbox labeled

Display->From Edges. At this point it is also helpful to select the remaining three back faces of the

box and reverse their orientation using right click >Reverse Faces. This will reorient the faces

towards you and improve their visibility. As shown in Figure 3, you are now looking into the interior

of the box and the crosshair casts a shadow onto the receiving surfaces. You can also download an

example shadow box here.

At this point we have a choice about how to proceed, depending on whether were working with a

pro copy of SketchUp or not. If so, you will want to install the Solar North extension available as an

add-on from the SketchUp Team. The Solar North tool allows you to change the north orientation of

the model as well as to display the setting as an orange line on the base plane. You can now reorient

your solar north angle as desired without rotating the model in order to get the correct shadows on

each face in turn.

Unfortunately, the Solar North extension is not available without a pro license and orienting the

model properly will require rotating it for each view. This is both clumsier and prone to introducing

slight mathematical errors into your model as you orient to none-orthogonal directions. If you are

forced to take that route, I recommend first saving a copy of your model so that you have an original

version to return to after you are done reorienting.

First, set your models latitude and longitude to 45 and 0 degrees respectively using the Set Manual

Location window under Model Info->Geo-Location. With north still at 0 degrees so that it is aligned

to the positive Y-axis, adjust your date and time to solar noon on the Fall Equinox, 11:53AM on

9/21/2014, in order to align your shadows precisely along the north vector. Set the magic date and

time by tweaking the values in the Shadows window. This is not perfect, but as close as we can get

with minutes being the minimum time adjustment value.

Figure 5: Initial construction of shadow box showing crosshairs & north angle 0. The orange line along the Y-axis

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Aligning the Sun in SketchUp Accurately :: SketchUp 3D Rendering Tutorials by SketchUpArtists

http://www.sketchupartists.org/tutorials/sketchup-and-advanced-modeling/aligning-the-sun-in-sketchup-accurately/[26-02-2014 23:47:19]

marks north, visible when the Solar North extension is installed.

Next, rotate north by 45 degrees using the Solar North toolbar. The advantage of rotating the angle

rather than the model is that SketchUp provides preset orthogonal views aligned to each axis.

Assuming your model building has faces constructed orthogonally to those axes as well (A good idea

for stable modeling), it is easy to expose each successive face of the building by switching to its view

and setting north to the respective 45, 135, 225, and 315 degrees. As mentioned previously, rotating

the model itself is hazardous as it can introduce tiny errors in point coordinates that will cause much

grief later on.

Figure 6: Final shadow box settings with the crosshairs aligned to the box base corner.

With North rotated 45 degrees, the sun is now 45 degrees off the building face, and we need only

adjust its elevation to get a vertical angle 45 degrees. Dont touch that time and date! Thats whats

getting you right on the north vector. Instead, adjust your longitude under the Model Info dialog so

that the shadow box crosshairs directly align with the lower back corner of the box. The magic

latitude was 55.4 degrees N.

Now by changing your view to each successive building face, and the north angle to each respective

quarter, you can quickly export beautifully stylized and consistent elevation studies. Separately

exported images for lines, materials and shadows can then be recombined in Adobe Photoshop to

further enhance the renderings as described in the excellent tutorial on masking by Lewis

Wadsworth.

Figure 7: Shadow mask exported from the Portland Gas & Coke Building.

Thanks for reading.

Brian

Aligning the Sun in SketchUp Accurately :: SketchUp 3D Rendering Tutorials by SketchUpArtists

http://www.sketchupartists.org/tutorials/sketchup-and-advanced-modeling/aligning-the-sun-in-sketchup-accurately/[26-02-2014 23:47:19]

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