SU Podium SketchUp Styles

SU Podium V2 has a feature called physical sky which can be access from the Options menu. There's often a question of when to apply physical sky or to use SketchUp’s default background. Here’s some tips and explanations on this topic.

SU Podium physical sky creates an accurate simulation of the real sky. It produces a realistic background with a greater color depth than SketchUp’s default background. Therefore, Physical Sky is almost always the best option. However, like in the real world, midday sky casts a bluish tint. In the real world, we don’t notice the blue tint (on a sunny day) because our eyes accommodate for the colors. If you are inside an artificially lightened building around noon on a sunny day and go outside, you will immediately notice this blue tint. But after a while, the tint will disappear. There is a specific color to every time of the day. For example, morning and evening will be yellow and noon will be white/blue.

Using a night style for night time colors.

There are situations when rendering that you do not want the physically accurate sky simulation. You may want to do a night rendering or need others atmospheres. In these cases, SketchUp’s style can help. A fast color adjustment in a Post Processing program like Photoshop is also very effective. We have made some SketchUp styles to help you. These styles are simply modified SketchUp sky and background colors. These are now available in the SketchUp Style dialog box. They are automatically installed when you install SU Podium V2.

Note: For SketchUp 2013 users, the Podium Styles folder is now installed in the SU_Podium_V2 folder. The location is here:

For Windows, SketchUp 2013
c:\program files (x86)\sketchup\skechup 2013\plugins\SU_Podium_V2\Podium\

For Mac, SketchUp 2013
MacIntosh HD\Library\Application Support\SketchUp 2013\SketchUp\Plugins\SU_Podium_V2\Podium\

For Windows, SketchUp 2013
c:\program files (x86)\sketchup\skechup 2013\styles\

For Mac, SketchUp 2013
MacIntosh HD\Library\Application Support\SketchUp 2013\SketchUp\Styles\

Below are images of the SketchUp styles that are effective twilight or night backgrounds for exterior renderings. Please update your SU Podium V2 to the most current version to obtain these styles automatically.

	Twilight. Twilight color style.
	Night_1. Night style.
	Dark Night. Another night scene style.
	No sky simulation. This is a simple SU sky that will render without the simulation’s tints. This way you can render morning and evening without the golden color. The blue midday color is also less visible.
	White Scene. This uses a unified white background. This way you will have no blue tint. It can be useful to render plans, cut or non-architectural models that does not have or need an environment.