Lumion - Test drive

Gaieus

Fine then. Some more purchases and I will claim a free copy.

Joking aside; yes, together with the pro's and con's AND provided one can justify the costs, this is a good software. If some further features are implemented, it will be a fine product.

You can also import SU terrain BTW although I have discovered some funny things (I will write some notes here).

boofredlay

I really have to check into Lumion. I like this Bruce.

Ecuadorian

I was about to ask you about the grass edges...

You have inspired me to try some desaturation on my future videos.

And yeah, I'm also using it for stills, as it's bloody fast to populate the scene with vegetation, vehicles, people, buildings, etc:

Plaza Elevada - sin techo010.jpg

Rico91

[flash=800,470:31hus8gm]http://www.youtube.com/v/b8-YKrLrngk?fs=1&hl=en_US[/flash:31hus8gm]

Gaieus

Hi Ricardo,

Nice video, however some observations:

At around 0:40.0:50, we can see a pool from the side. To me it seems that you somehow managed to paint the side of the pool with that water material, too - that looks a bit funny from here.
You have vast areas with grass - the original grass material you exported from SU I presume. You can turn this into Lumion "grass" - the same material it uses for its terrain (see an example video below).
This would make it sure that you exported terrain blends perfectly with the surrounding Lumion terrain and since the Lumion materials (for terrain at least) are procedural, it would not even be so apparently repeating pattern that you have now. On top of all, if you switch that material to Lumion terrain material, you can also "paint" on it with the Lumion terrain edit > Paint tools (alwys do this in a TOP view however as there is a glitch which is mora apparent with very sloping terrains or terrains quite high above the "real" Lumion terrain).
In some of the interior shots, where there are those very white materials, they seem to bloom too much. I do not know what colour you used there but as a general rule of thumb, pure white should never be used - something around 80-90% of whiteness (i.e. some light grey) might be better - but I do not know how this would work with Lumion...

See this video on how to blend your imported terrain with Lumion terrain. It's mostly at the beginning of the tutorial, from around 0:45/50 on...

[flash=600,400:1ea2lw9e]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=17529494&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"[/flash:1ea2lw9e]

But again, cool video and nice presentation (I have not really played around with interiors too much yet)

boofredlay

Ok so seeing all the great results I got the demo and installed it. Upon starting up I selected the mountain range scene and started to move around and crap, it is so slow it is unusable. Just to move one arrow key left or right takes 3 or 4 seconds. Panning the view right took at least 20 seconds and hovering over the landscape or weather controls takes 5 seconds just to show the tooltip window. I fear the video card our office has chosen will not allow us to use this program.

Ecuadorian

They recommend GeForce cards for Lumion. They're cheaper than Quadro cards.

Just get the coolest GeForce you can find/afford and you're all set.

boofredlay

That is the problem, I don't have a say in what hardware we get at the office. In fact this computer is not even 2 months old so changing cards would be like pulling teeth. Sigh.

boofredlay

Well some good news, I updated the driver and saw that I could change the quality level in Lumion and it is somewhat manageable now. Hopefully I can get some nice results like you guys have produced.

Gaieus

What's the memory of that card?

I have a GeForce 9600 GT with 1 Gb memory and it performs pretty well.

Also, when navigating (and not the card is the issue), pressing the Shift key speeds movement up (a bit at least).

boofredlay

Memory on the card... I haven't got a friggin' clue. All but open the box I searched for the info and can't find it.

Shift does me no good as it is too slow regardless. The driver update and setting Lumion to low quality only helped a bit. It is still very annoying trying to navigate.

Now at home it is quick and I have no problems.

jason_maranto

If I had to guess it would be this version:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133274

or this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133307

Either way it is not a card meant for realtime rendering in DirectX -- it is an entry level (read bottom of the barrel) OpenGL card that would be enough to get good performance from Sketchup and other cad programs but not much else.

I'm pretty sure lumion uses DirectX and not openGL -- so a gaming type card would serve much better... although they often don't work so great for Sketchup.

Best,
Jason.

boofredlay

Thanks Jason, I am sure bottom of the barrel applies here yes.

jason_maranto

Well if it helps any, Sketchup doesn't need much more than that and so any Quadro card(open GL) above 512mb in video memory is wasted on Sketchup -- and they can be quite expensive... so truly for Sketchup use you have the right card (I've got a Quadro470 system myself).

The distinction here is the 2 systems are designed for radically different purposes -- Lumion is essentially a video game, Sketchup is basically a CAD program... there is very little common ground in how they display their graphics.

It breaks down like this:

OpenGL = Precise and stable
DirectX = Fast and looks nice

Best,
Jason.

Gaieus

There are some clues on cards here:
http://lumion3d.com/forum/index.php?topic=6.0
and #4 here:
http://lumion3d.com/forum/index.php?topic=310.0

marvins_dad

Finally got my license!
Now I need to find time to work with it on a project again.

Gaieus

A new update is coming soon (I am kind of excited about actually as it covers a couple of things that would be very fine for me)

extra fog and smoke effects (I am not sure is flames with the smoke are coming too)
flowing water + cataract and fountain effect for water
ocean waves (those bigger ones on top of which there are the smaller ripples we already have) with automatic foaming of the water on the shores
and of course, new foliage, moving animals and alike that was also added during the last update (and hopefully there will be newer and newer additions with each update)

[flash=600,340:6e8ice72]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=22124363&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" width="400" height="225"[/flash:6e8ice72]
There is an update "preview" post here:
http://lumion3d.com/lumion-update-2-preview

It seems that they are going to the direction of core updates and extra plugin/package updates that can be purchased separately. This may be a good way as users may need this and that but not need another package (I would not need to many palm trees where I live for instance).

And whoever is still tempted, note that Lumion is on a € 100 discount sale for another couple of days now!

solo

Oooh! that looks like a great update.

Waterfalls!, fire, smoke, fish, waves, particles and more trees.

marvins_dad

Well - it's May...hopefully it comes out soon!

marvins_dad

From the Lumion forums yesterday...

@unknownuser said:

Most things are finished but this will be a BIG update. We'll have plug-ins and we'll have a completely new online user frontend so you can easily download updates and purchase plug-ins. Additionally the licensing will go trough the online system so you do not need dongle anymore. On top of that we'll have many new features you can see in the preview movie and there are several UI improvements like a new lay-out here and there and you'll be able to type in values for sliders for example.