Topic: Transparency on windows

[Elchitekt]

I have an urgent question: Since all the time my windows became transparent in Lumion, this time, all the windows appear non-transparent. I added the material "glass" as I always did, but they only turned from black to light grey My model was imported from SketchUp as a dae-file. Since now, it always worked fine .... Anyone can help me ?

[peterm]

Check that somehow double sided is not turned on ie not = to 1, should really only make slighty darker so sounds unusual.

If that is OK, if you can post the DAE or SkUp (preferred) of the model, or the scene files, or if not the whole model, then re-export just the windows/glass so someone here can check in their Lumion.

[Elchitekt]

I do not understand everything ... Doublesided was turned on while I exported the SketchUp-file to .dae.
What should I do ?

[Elchitekt]

The next problem ist (always since I use Lumion), that sooo often my materials appear all white after exporting them from SkUP. So my whole model is white and I have to find the "mistake" or split the model in dofferent parts and fit them together in Lumion again Massive work for nothing. Is there a better solution ?

[peterm]

I do not understand everything ... Doublesided was turned on while I exported the SketchUp-file to .dae.
What should I do ?

So previously when things worked you were exporting with doublesided exports?

Why are you exporting double-sided?

Double-sided would result in a surface for glass having 2 faces so I presume you have applied Lumion glass to each side/face of the window object?

Exporting for SkUp as double-sided would result in twice the number of faces Lumion will have to render, when for most it does not need that extra face (depending on whether you are building walls or single planes for walls.

If you need faces/surfaces for opposite sides then create objects with depth/additional sides, as well as/or apply different materials so the 2 faces are recognised as separate renderable surfaces.

[peterm]

The next problem ist (always since I use Lumion), that sooo often my materials appear all white after exporting them from SkUP. So my whole model is white and I have to find the "mistake" or split the model in dofferent parts and fit them together in Lumion again Massive work for nothing. Is there a better solution ?

Lumion looks at all the surfaces defined with the same material allocated and combines all surfaces with same material into one renderable surface, this is part of its optimisation that allows for realtime etc.

Usually if you don't assign any specific material in SkUp, it has the 'default' material, so all faces when exported will be the same overall surface, and the same single material (seen as white).  So when you try to select and apply materials in Lumion everything will be the same single material.  This is as it should be.

Almost always work within the DCC to apply unique materials to all the surfaces that are ever likely to require some specific material.

So if a surface has a material belonging to another surface, then it does not know that that should be separate unless you tell it that it should be separate.  The way to do that is apply different materials in SketchUp, only needs to be a different name (ie can have all the other settings that same).

So for a wall you could have a single plane, assign 'wallFront' to one side and 'wallBack' to the other face, and exporting as single sided you will find both materials on each side are different in Lumion, can be selected as separate surfaces to change or amend material settings, and each will interact with lighting for the normals facing out from that surface.

You should never have to split models and fit together in Lumion to resolve what is a process of applying materials to required faces.  Only time needed to split is when the scene had massive models with heaps of poly and the importer process works better to get the model in if split to smaller chunks.

HTH.

[Morten]

Hi aelg, it would be easier to help you if you could upload a simple SketchUp model file + some screenshots that demonstrate what the problem is.

[Elchitekt]

Yesterday it took me a while (the whole day), but anyhow, I managed to get the windows transparent and all the rest worked (slow, but fine in the end).
Thx for helping. I am sure I need your help next time again. And I will post some examples then
THX!