Exporting just shadows from 3d city

Hi

I was wondering the following... I currently created a 3d city in Sketchup. I love the "shadow' feature in Sketchup because it makes

your city come even more alive. I know how to export my model to 3ds format but I would like to export just the shadow map (from all the buildings) as some sort of JPEG file. So basically, I need the shadow map from my buildings so I can just use this map as some sort of a sprite.

Does anyone has ever done this?

Thanks in advance...

There are several ways to do this. Here is one that saves your applied textures:

- Start by creating a new style in the Styles palette

- turn off Edges and Profiles in the Styles>Edit>Edge settings

- Open up the Layers palette, and change all the materials on the right to pure white

- Change your display to "Color by layer" from the Details menu of the Layer dialog or the Modeling settings pane of the Styles palette.

- In Shadow settings, turn on shadows and drag the Light slider far right and the Dark slider to 50%.

- Save your style.

- Export the image. You may have to adjust the lightness/contrast in your image editor if the shadows appear too light.

If you are using transparent materials, to preserve them you must put transparent objects on their own layer and assign a transparent material to that.

Anssi

HI Anssi,

Thx so much for your explanation...

I want to save the shadows for my buildings. I will set my view to topview and try your solution out...

Thanks again!

Psycoustic

Psycoustic,

The method I posted was a bit too complicated for a simple topview. This is a simpler way:

- in Styles/Face settings, set both Front and Back colours to pure white and click on the "Display shaded using all same" button

- in Shadow settings, turn on shadows and drag the Light slider far right, and the Dark slider to 50%

- save your style if you wish

- Export the image.

Anssi