Shadow Range Study Error - Shadows unrealistically dark

Hi Team,

I downloaded the Shadow Range Study from Hydra and I am experiencing a peculiar error, specifically the shadow range study is stating that my terrain and buildings will receive less than 1h of sunlight daily.

Now I tried troubleshooting, specifically I removed the walkways and forms and repeated the shadow range study, this gave the EXACT same resilt. Meaning with or without any volumes, the amount of shadow casted on the site is the same. I believe this may be due to my terrain? My terrain’s lowest point is 2.5m.

I then proceeded to have a flat surface and it casted the shadow study perfectly. Any suggestions on what to do as I require a shadow range analysis on my site and volumes and not a planar suface. Please see the image below for your reference.

I am unable to upload the file due to being a new user, so I will potentially have to upload the files to a third party if required

Can anyone please help me troubleshoot this?

Thank you.

Welcome to the forum @Niku85
From what I understood, the shadow range study component is producing unexpected results for you.
From your attached image, I could see that the first 2 images show analysis run for 1 particular hour of the day, that is why your max value of the legend is 1 hour ONLY.
The last image shows analysis run for a whole day ie for 12 sun hours per day.

Anyway rather than using Shadow range study component, try using the sunlight hours component which will be a better fit with more control. And to see the impact of shadow by the context geometries, you have to use sunlight hours component to achieve results.

Hi Mahesh!

Thank you for your reply!

I checked the hours of the script and it is the full 24 hours for both geometries. (If you do need to review the files, here is the link to the Rhino forum with the attachments Shadow Range Study Error - Shadows unrealistically dark - Grasshopper - McNeel Forum)

I rebuilt the geometry and got up to 4h in Winter and 2h in Summer. Either way something seems wrong.

The effect I am trying to recreate is as attached.However, this was on a planar surface.

Within the shadow range study grasshopper script, the sunlight hours component is being used rather than the shadow range script.

PFA Hydra Viewer

Thank you

@Niku85 , I looked into the file, there are 2 issues that need to be corrected,

  1. Always try to work with meters or convert the units to meters before starting your grasshopper scripts (Ladybug work best in meters).
  2. Flip the analysis surface, make sure that the vectors always face in the upwards direction. You can do within rhino itself using Flip command or in grasshopper using the Flip component.

Before;

After;

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Hi Mahesh!

It worked perfectly. Thank you so much for this!

I really appreciate it :slightly_smiling_face: