Object Properties
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Object Properties are properties placed directly on model entities to specify rendering properties of the entities.
Settings which are better set on a material, are defined using the Material Wizard
To set object properties, right click on a face, group, or components and select IRender Object Properties. There are two classes of Object Properties - Lighting and Other Object Properties.
Lighting
Causes this entity to act as a light.
- Light Type
- None - do not treat this object as a light.
- Diffuse / One Sided - all light goes in one direction. This should be used for ceiling lights and other area lights.
- Omni-Directional or Isotropic (all directions)
- Spotlight - should only be used for the lens of a spotlight.
- Light direction (Component or Group)
- Spotlight and Diffuse light needs to have a direction.
- For lights assigned to faces the direction will always be a perpendicular from the front side of the face.
- For components and groups, you can assign the direction based on the axes of the component, or the transformation of the group. If you create a spot light which points down (in the negative blue axis of the component, then select - Blue for the Light direction.
- Intensity - In watts or lumens
- Spot Lamp Settings
- Beam Angle - For Spot lights - see Beam Angle
- Field Angle - For Spot lights - see Field Angle
The color of the light will be determined by the color of the SketchUp entity.
Other Object Properties
Set the values desired:
- Daylight Portal - Produces realistic sun and daylight effects from windows.
- See: Daylight Portal
- Caustics - Creates caustic refraction of light for a transparent object.
- Thick - Marks glass as created from more than just a single face.
- See Thin - Thick
- Invisible - the object will be sent to the renderer, but marked as invisible.
- See: Invisible
- Alpha - You can mark objects as Alpha Channel, and they will appear invisible but shadows cast on them will appear. This can be used to let your model cast shadows on walls or nearby buildings, and then paste the rendered image and the shadows on top of a photographic background.
- See: IRender Alpha Images
Ground Cover
- See: Ground Cover for defining and assigning Ground Cover foliage to a surface.
Object Properties vs Material Settings
Some object properties - such as thin/thick glass can be set either on a material, or directly on an object.
The advantage of setting the property on the material, is that you can create a material - e.g. ThinGlass - and place it on all thin glass objects.
The advantage of setting the property directly on the face of the glass, is that you can then set an SketchUp material on the glass and it will render as thin glass without having to make a new (thin) material for each color of glass which you want to use.