I am in the process of baking my first model. When it is done, I will share it so you can give me some pointers in how to improve.
However, I have already encountered one problem that I hope someone can give me guidance on. I have some materials that are not showing up properly (see the image below).
I assume I have done something wrong.
This is a problem with so called reversed faces aka improper face orientation. In SketchUp faces are double-sided: a face has front and back sides, while in Shapespark a face has only front side. This means that in Shapespark a face is rendered only if you are looking at it from the front. This is a matter of time & size optimization: light information is baked and stored only for the front sides.
This short video tutorial shows how to identify and reorient reversed faces in SketchUp: 03. Proper face orientation - YouTube
Thanks for the feedback. I got the problem parts from the 3D Warehouse and did not run the check. I will fix the.
Again, thanks for the feedback…
I see. Unfortunately, a lot of models in the 3D Warehouse have problems with face orientation.
Well, I just finished rendering/baking my first model. There are plenty of things wrong but I needed to complete one project. 
Here it is: My first model…
I am going to compile a list of questions because I sure have a bunch of them for future attempts before my trial expires. I see lots of errors I made but feel free to point them out to me. This was a very old model that I will wind up either scraping or redoing.
The biggest challenge for me at this point is going back and understanding how to apply lighting better and trying to figure out how to add a better background. Even with all of the problems I see, I am kind of happy because some parts are better than I expected.
If this would be better in another thread, please feel free to move it.
BTW: The baking process took about 8 hours and I only had the sample rate set at 200.
I’m evaluating Shapespark for my professional workflow (interior design) but it seems like this would be a major impediment adding a lot of seemingly redundant steps.
Would you be willing to provide an option to render both faces for all objects in the scene? The very long rendering/preview time in comparison to Brighter3D, on top of having to reverse many faces, is very off-putting for now, but I am definitely waiting for improvements.
We have Double sided option that helps with some cases, please see the description and the limitations here: https://help.shapespark.com/hc/en-us/articles/360009286378-Materials
Always rendering both-sides of all triangles would double the baking time, lightmap size and would decrease the frame-rate. For such reasons real-time engines render only the front faces, it adds to the production cost, but from a performance perspective a better approach is to fix the orientation than to treat everything as double-sided.
