Shaderlight forums

Hello,

There are a few things to check for when transparent objects don’t look transparent:

1) For non-thin glass transparent Shaderlight materials, transparent objects need to be modelled as solid objects – that is have a ‘front’ and a ‘back’ surface modelled using SketchUp faces. (For panes of glass etc, you can usually get away with two faces, because the ‘edges’ are embedded in the opaque window frame/wall. For free-standing transparent objects, all of its faces need to be present so that rays can correctly enter and leave the volume of the transparent object in all directions.)

2) The objects behind the transparent material need to be brighter than the objects in front of the transparent material. Because most transparent materials are also reflective, if the reflections (often of the sky) are brighter than the transmitted light, the reflections can drown out the other objects.

3) The material colour needs to be quite bright and the SketchUp Opacity setting needs to be quite low if the transparent object is thick. The material colour combined with the opacity setting determine the rate of absorption within the transparent object. So, dark, thick objects will absorb any light coming through them and you will be left with just the reflection from the front face, which, depending on the brightness of the surroundings, might make it appear white.

If none of that helps, could you post a screenshot showing your SketchUp model and the resulting render? That might provide enough hints to prompt some other suggestions. Alternatively, you could post a link to your model (via Dropbox or similar) so that we can take a more detailed look. If you can’t share your model publicly, feel free to send the link to us directly at .

Regards,
Shaderlight support

Hi, thank you for the feedback. It’s not a case of what’s showing in the render, but what appears to be happening directly in SketchUp/Shaderlight. I’ve attached a couple of screen grabs showing what I mean. As you can see, the colour for thin glass appears accurate, but goes “solid” for solid glass and liquid. I work with liquid effects a fair bit, so any advice is gratefully appreciated.

Hi,

You’re right – that is not how it’s supposed to work!

After some investigation, it turns out that this was broken as a result of a (supposedly) unrelated change in Shaderlight 7.1, which inadvertently made all solid transparent materials extremely pale – effectively white/grey.

We hope to be able to release a fix soon, but in the meantime, you may get better results for this use-case by temporarily downgrading to Shaderlight 7.0, which can be downloaded here:

Windows: https://artvps.com/dl/ShaderlightForSketchUp_700.msi
Mac: https://artvps.com/dl/ShaderlightForSketchUp_700.dmg

Apologies for the inconvenience and thanks for bringing it to our attention.

Regards,
Shaderlight support

That seems to have done the job! Many thanks indeed for your help.

We have issued a bug-fix release that should fix the problem described in this thread.

Installers for the new release, 7.1.2, can be found here:

Windows: https://artvps.com/dl/ShaderlightForSketchUp_712.msi
Mac: https://artvps.com/dl/ShaderlightForSketchUp_712.dmg

Thanks for your patience,
Shaderlight support