Solar studies enable you to visualize the impact of natural light and shadows on both the exteriors and interiors of Revit and AutoCAD projects. You can either directly render a solar study or preview it first and then render a full solar study. Some of you may know what a solar study is, but many of you may have seen this half-sun icon and wondered what it means.This is the icon for a solar study preview.
When would you use a solar study preview?
Solar study preview is an image which is used to preview nine frames of the solar study and adjust its exposure before you spend credits to render it as full solar study.
Once the exposure settings have been adjusted, click Start render button, to render the full solar study. Full solar study thumbnails are identified in a collection with full-sun icon.
How are solar study previews generated?
In Revit, 3D view’s sun settings dialog, if you checked the Single Day or Multi-Day option, and then send it to Cloud Rendering, it will render a solar study preview rendering, instead of rendering a still image. Before closing the sun setting dialog, please make sure the date, time, frames settings are correct since this information will transfer to the full solar study.
What are the different ways of generating solar studies?
There are two ways to create full solar study, and each have their advantages:
- Change Sun settings in Revit -> solar study preview -> full solar study. Using this method, you can preview the rendering and adjust its exposure before spending cloud credits.
- Render an image as a solar study, directly from the web portal.
Using this method, you could create solar study quickly without changing the Sun settings in Revit.
A full solar study is generated as a movie file and looks like this on My Renderings. You can play the movie file in the portal or download it.
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