ABSTRACT

The Sun & Sky system is connected by default in SketchUp, so you can enable or disable shadows to understand where the sun is located. However, in V-Ray 5 and later (including V-Ray 7) you can also customize the position of the sun by enabling this feature from Sun’s properties (Custom Orientation controller). Enjoy the lesson.

This public demo is for people who render V-Ray inside SketchUp and want to see how daylight is taught in the 5SRW course.

SketchUp already ties the sun to the shadow tool, so most users move the sun by dragging shadows on the ground. That is fine for massing. It is not enough when you need a photographic exterior or a room that feels like a real time of day. V-Ray’s Sun & Sky is the system that turns that SketchUp sun into a render light: colour temperature, intensity, and the sky that fills the windows.

The lesson also shows why V-Ray lets you unlock a custom sun orientation. You keep the SketchUp model as it is, but you place the sun for the photograph you want — low winter light, a late afternoon interior, a façade with a long shadow — without fighting the default north.

Watch this if you are comparing courses, or if your SketchUp renders look flat at noon and you do not yet know whether the problem is the sun, the camera, or the exposure. This page is a taste of the SketchUp track, not the full program. The study program lists every SketchUp lesson; scene files stay in the member area.

English is the spoken language on this preview. The method is the same photographic approach used on the 3ds Max and Rhino tracks, applied to SketchUp’s own sun workflow.

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