Lumion - Test drive

marvins_dad

From the Lumion forums yesterday...

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.

Ecuadorian

Nice to see they're addressing user requests.

solo

I see there is a 64 bit version 2, I'm still on update 1, I got a dongle, but cannot see the download section for version 2. anyone got link?

solo

Playing around

[flash=650,366:5t1zakzt]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=23616495&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:5t1zakzt]

Ecuadorian

I'm more impressed with your texturing skills than with Lumion...

Bob James

Awesome buildings and textures, Pete. Uber-Real.
I assume that "Playing around" referred to the use of Lumion. The model(s) must have been for something serious.

Gaieus

I started to test some atmospheric animations (fog, cloud, sun, god rays and what not). This was just a (very) quicky to see how things can be configured. Obviously the sun animation is a bit speedy but will be nice somewhere at the beginning or end of a longer walkthrough...

YouTube - Lumion Test Drive - Atmospheric Animation
[flash=600,360:2xnwf09p]http://www.youtube.com/v/f02JZ9JxCOs[/flash:2xnwf09p]

Sorry Pete for the sound effects (at least not some music) but the blackbird is supposed to represent morning...

solo

I really need to find music for my crap.

Here is an old model, everyone here had seen it a million times, thought I'd run it through Lumion....WOW!!, I promise I took 20 minutes to set up and an hour to render.

Lumion is soo quick and easy.

[flash=640,360:27lzds4k]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=23705978&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:27lzds4k]

Gaieus

@solo said:

Here is an old model, everyone here had seen it a million times...

Yeah, it's getting boring...

@solo said:

Lumion is soo quick and easy.

Well seriously speaking; this is it.

Gaieus

Ocean...

[flash=650,366:15afh5r1]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=23685778[/flash:15afh5r1]

@unknownuser said:

...the target is this month-ish. If we need to fix some essential bugs at the last moment it could be delayed a bit but certainly no more than 2 weeks. It's safe to say we'll release within a month from now.

I don't know if this is clear in the communications we put out until now but we'll be releasing some of this stuff as plug-ins. The plug-ins are quite cheap though we'll provide more info on this later. Most of the plug-ins will add special effects or extra content. I think the tree package will almost double the number of tree models for example.

Of course Lumion without the plug-ins will be extended on many fronts too. We have a color picker, better lay-out, better tone mapping, you can type in slider values. That sort of stuff.

We'll keep the versions simple from now on:
a) We have Lumion 1.0 and if you bought that you get all service packs for free.
b) On top of that you will be able to get some plug-ins and they require some extra payment
c) Much later we will release Lumion 2.0 and you will be able to upgrade for around 1/3rd of the full price.
d) We will try to release a major new version every year and have service packs in between.

This is not an official statement so it's subject to change but the final outcome will probably be something like this.

boofredlay

Ooooo

Gaieus

I am more looking forward to another water effect; flowing water and cataracts / fountains as well as a sort of particle effect; fog, smoke (and hopefully fire).

We have little sea here (although these shots are indeed nice).

Bob James

I've spent several hours yesterday and today watching all the tutorials at Lumion and "playing" with the free version. A remarkable program at this stage of its development. I can see it could lure me into "playing" instead of working It obviously requires discipline in development of the SU models in order to be able to "pick out" the surfaces to be textured in Lumion. Fortunately, because of Thea, I've started making major use of Name Groups ruby and Reverse Back Faces ruby to start me down that road.

Some questions:

I've seen nothing with lighting: inside or out. Is that "in the cards"? Most of my large scale work involves large numbers of lights inside, and lights and spotlights outside.
Can I assume that I could export a large Google Earth terrain from SU and re-texture it in Lumion? I tried this with Vue 8 and upgrade to 9, and did not have much success. Sort of wasted my money there (mainly lack of skill, but I tried).
Following my Vue misadventure, if Lumion Version 2 will be out in ~30 days, does it make any sense to buy Version 1 now and have to pay 1/3 more to upgrade to Version 2?

solo

there are emmisive materials at moment, never used them yet however.
I'm not sure what you mean by re-texture.
I believe the next update is still version one, just a second update. so basically 1.2. (I could be wrong, but this is what I understand)

solo

I threw a few of my previous clips together, mixed in some Enya and here you go..

[flash=750,430:2t3otuew]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=23777286[/flash:2t3otuew]

Pixero

Solo, looks great...exept the camera movements. Got me all sea sick.
Seriously, more realistic looking camera movement (Think steadycam and cranes. And cuts instead of zooms.) would help selling the scenes as real instead of modelled.

Another issue I have with Lumion is that all the trees are so huge and old. Some young trees would look more real around new built houses.

Bob James

Thanks, Pete.

@solo said:

I'm not sure what you mean by re-texture.

Replace the GE "real world" texture with a Lumion landscape texture. Sort of "start over" with something better looking (albeit less accurate).

solo

I agree, I'm still learning all these things, I have just watched the 'making movies' tutorial (should have done that a while ago) and seen some of my errors.

So I can say that my next clips will be better.

The trees, yeah, they are kinda limited right now, hopefully there will be more content soon, or I may need to figure out how to get my own trees into Lumion.

Bob, yes that's possible, see the material tutorial.

Bob James

@solo said:

Bob, yes that's possible, see the material tutorial.

Yes I understand how to re-texture it once it's in Lumion: the operative part of the statement was "Can I assume that I could export a large Google Earth terrain from SU as a collada file and successfully import it into Lumion and manipulate it"? I was never able to successfully do that in Vue.

Bob James

@pixero said:

Another issue I have with Lumion is that all the trees are so huge and old. Some young trees would look more real around new built houses.

It would also help if they could be scaled (or did I miss that capability?)

Update

From Lumion Forum:

@unknownuser said:

Settings -> Always Advanced Mode on: This displays additional options, sliders, buttons and parameters which can be adjusted in Lumion. If you do not want to see the advanced options all the time, you can turn them on temporarily by pressing the CTRL key to see extra options in the following modes:

Import / Object modes: Move Object gizmos display additional Rotate Pitch and Bank buttons as well as a Uniform Scale button.