With SketchUp's Shadows feature, you can make your model cast a basic shadow or see how the sun casts shadows on or around a geolocated model. When you're casting real-world shadows, SketchUp's calculations are based on the following:

With colors, textures, and photos, you can add details that make a 3D model look realistic and complete: Colors are like paint. Textures add realistic materials, such as carpet, tile, grass, wood, glass, and anything else you can capture as a digital image. Photos can be pinned to your model (or just a face within it). In SketchUp’s Materials panel (Microsoft Windows) or Colors panel (macOS), you find predefined colors and textures, which you can edit. Or try mixing your own colors or creating a texture from a photo.

SketchUp Styles can add complexity to a model that slow down SketchUp as you work on your 3D model. To apply the styles you need while optimizing performance, use Fast Style. When a style qualifies as a Fast Style, SketchUp displays a badge like this: If you apply a style created in SketchUp 2014 or earlier, the Fast Style doesn't display the badge until you force the style to update once in SketchUp.

In SketchUp, you can create and edit styles so that you can apply your preferred style settings with a single click. Tip: If you want to develop a sketchy edges style, check out Style Builder. To create a new style, follow these steps: