Setting up the camera view

The following are the steps to set up a view interactively:

Saving the camera view

Now that you're happy with the view you have created, you need to save it so that it can't be changed by accident or while doing further modeling tasks. You do this by creating a scene that will be imported into the rendering software as a camera view:

Rotate your view now with the middle-mouse button, then click on the tab. You are taken back to the view that was used when you created the scene. Scenes retain their view settings as part of their options.

Setting up the sun

We want to get some direct sunlight in through the window to bounce off the wall and floor. Within SketchUp, the "sun" only lights up areas that are not obstructed, and there is a sharp contrast between light and dark. In the renderer, the sunlight will bounce into the whole room. There is more on lighting in Chapter 8, Photorealistic Rendering. You can change the lighting and shadows in a scene by changing the Sun's position via date and time as explained in the following steps:

You now have all the lighting you need for a daytime indoor scene. The following screenshot is what you would get if you did a quick test render in Thea Render. As you can see, the whole room is lit by the sun, just as it would be in real life: