Finer Shadows and Edges in Podium Renders

By Majid Yeganegi

Podium renders are really excellent and you can make them even better with a few little tweaks. Sometimes fine details are missed during the render process, and maybe you need to have them or by adding this further detail would improve your renders. If this is the case then this tutorial is for you.

Let’s start with the current style: we need two styles, the first one is a line style that should present depth also and the second one is an appropriate style for podium render, for each scene. Then we will do some post processing using an image editor (here I’m using Photoshop).

Step 1. Choose your scene, and then go to Style Panel (Window>Menu>Style). I started from Default Style, then changed Face Style to Hidden Line Mode and added a White Fog and adjusted it so that it simulates a sense of depth and then exported this first image.

Step 1

Step 2. Then I used Textured Mode for my Face Styles, and using Style Menu (Windows >Menu> Style Menu) changed my background color to a pale gray-violet color and disabled the sky as shown in the picture below.

Step 2

Step 3. Now lets start to render. I used a refined “Ultra soft shadow setting” that has low light leaks, while I’ve enabled “Use sun for shading” and disabled “Display shadows” from Shadow Menu.

Step 3

Step 4. Now save this render and for the next render, enable “Display shadows” and disable “Use sun for shading” and re-render the same scene.

Step 4

Step 5. Now we have 3 renders. One line render directly from SketchUp and two podium renders. Go to your image editor application ( here I use Photoshop ) , copy and paste the third render over the second one and decrease opacity to 20%. Then merge these 2 layers so that we have a nice soft shadow render that at the same time we can see the shadow edges. This is good enough and maybe you don’t need any more tweaking. Then open the first line render from SketchUp using “Ctrl+Shift+L” and “Ctrl+Shift+U” then adjust it. Copy and paste it over the previous render, change the Blending Mode to Multiply and decrease opacity to about 20%, and merge these two layers again.

Step 5

Now you have a nice render with fine edges.

Final Image

Hope this has been helpful to you all and I will have some more new ideas for you real soon.

Cheers

Majid