Adjustable line thickness

#41

OK, yes, I see the limitations of the “on face” mode and it may not be perfect for this use case. It was really meant to be used if you need a little bit more performance… In the standard “standalone edges” mode, the edges are really 2D lines, not 3D objects, in the sense that they are drawn just like you would draw a line on a screen, but between two screen coordinates that happen to be at the right position, giving you the 3D feeling. The resolution is typically lower than on a screen, and so all the lines are thicker. That’s the reason for why a bunch of lines on a far-away object ends up with too many pixels black… Switching all non-top-level edges to the “on face” mode might not be the solution either—it’s common to have models where all the geometry is in some subgroup. But maybe we can think about some other way…

A PC-only solution to try could be to draw lines smaller than one pixel wide—this should work because the PC graphic card is actually drawing four subpixels for each pixels, and averaging them out (using some clever optimization that makes it much less than 4 times slower). This avoids a lot of the “aliasing” effect that occurs otherwise and is the main reason for why the image looks a bit more jagged on the standalone Quest. So we could try to draw the lines inside the subpixels manually, half-a-pixel wide, and thus get the lines theoretically thinner than one pixel. I need to check the result and the performance.

#42

Thank you. Unfortunately I’m on Macs :frowning: but even there if I group together all the lines drawn on top of a shape rather than letting them subdivide that shape, the lines will shop up thick. So while that may do the trick visually, it would remove my ability to them extract individual area measurements of the areas that these lines would have otherwise created… and I do that a lot on my floor plans for instance. I hope this makes sense. Anyway, whatever you can do, it can only make things better :slight_smile: Many thanks again

#43

Maybe an option per component, in the list of components, where we can choose to hide edges in that specific component? Hide either all of them or the non-profile edges only?

#44

Well, that would most likely work because we’re only talking about relatively few cases. Plus added control. So yes, that would work well enough for me and it’s a neat way of doing it. Thank you so much!

#45

Hello again. I had a go at logic shadows and they don’t seem to work. I tried exporting the model from both SU 2024 and 2025 in both cases using the latest VR sketch extension and also downloaded the latest version of the app on my quest 3. Not sure what I am ding wrong :frowning: - in the app I still get the little yellow warning triangle saying that the model needs to be updated using the latest VR Sketch update. Thanks

#46

Can you confirm the version you have on the computer? The sketchup extension warehouse was very slow to acknowledge our request to update it, and it only updated to 27.0.0 a few days ago. (Check the “About” command in the menu in case of doubt.) If you are uploading the model with 27.0.0 and it still doesn’t work, then, oops? I’ll need to double-check.

#47

Oups indeed :). The one I have is 25.0.0 But it has all the other nice bells and whistles you mentioned only a week or so ago which is îmi thought it must have been the latest one. I’ll keep my eyes open for a new release. can I subscribe to updates on warehouse?
Thank you!

#48

I restarted SketchUp and it now says that I have v 27 installed. And the shadows work as expected in VR. One lives and learns… Thank you again and sorry for the false alarm.

  1. … come to think of it, and the current behaviour is to be expected, when inside the warehouse the shadows on the model are generated by the fixed light outside of the warehouse. Naturally, one cannot control the shadows when in this mode. But it would be interesting if one could… it is after all where you meet guests in the first place and give an introductory tour of the building, explain principles etc.

  2. I could never figure out what ‘options follow SketchUp’ is actually supposed to do, but maybe that tickbox could be part of the visitor experience. For instance, when you tick the box, some curtains inside the warehouse are drawn and the model is illuminated by its own sun.

  3. Which takes me to the next question: can you have several models ‘stored’ in that warehouse? It can become a business showcase to my Clients: the first time they visit I could give them a tour of other designs, perhaps similar to their own etc. To me, that would also be a useful way of presenting and comparing options of the same project, particularly at earlier stages when the models don’t have to be too large. In fact, what would be even more interesting would be if one could have the same model loaded several times with different tags/ scenes activated in each of them for a birds’eye presentation of all available options. Or an alias with the same effect if that can streamline the process. After all, you don’t want more objects uploaded unnecessarily. If you then want to start ‘working’ on an alias, the warehouse disappears together with all the other aliases. It is clearly not that simple in collaboration mode but there may be a way of making it work. I’d be happy to test/imagine this scenario for you if you though that had any potential overall.

  4. And last thought: I noticed that when you physically move around a model, particularly at a large scale, say 1:50, the image of the model is very ‘jittery’ and potentially/therefore sickness-inducing whereas if you rotate or scale the model in space using the controllers to navigate around it, the motion feels a lot smoother even at the same scale. Is there anything that can be done about that? I hope that makes sense

Anyway, take care, all the best and thanks again for listening.

#49

And thanks again for the logic shadows. The function is invaluable :slight_smile:

#50

Here is the next in-development version with the ability to turn off edges on any group or component instance in the model. (If you install it on Quest standalone, you also need the updated Sketchup .rbz on your PC/Mac for that to work.)

Also included: the profile edges are drawn a little bit thinner on lower-resolution displays (this is mostly about the standalone Quest 2; even Quest 2 with PC Link is rendered at a higher resolution).

If you can, please try it out! Happy holidays to everybody and merry Christmas.

#51

Thank you so much. I will try this after Christmas
Merry Christmas you too!