Lumion - Test drive

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.

Gaieus

Well, to chime in...

This upcoming release of Lumion is not "version 2" yet. As Pete said, it's more like 1.2 (though they number things differently - like "update 2" or so).

You can easily scale any tree or other plant (uniformly from top to bottom so it sticks to the ground)

scale tree.jpg
You can also paint your imported mesh (yes, you can import your terrain just like any other model) as terrain although currently, admittedly this is one of the weakest points (custom terrain/landscape) or better put this way; "many of the feature requests concern this area..." in Lumion - but since it's granted by the development, this is also the area where new features can definitely be expected.

As for camera movements; it seems that there will be some more improvements here as well although it is really up to the user to take the snapshots (that Lumion later "stitches" together as an animation similar to SU Scenes) more carefully. I guess after porting his models to Lumion, Pete was already too excited to see the result and did not pay as much attention to this part as to the model itself.

As for lights; yes, there are emitters ATM but I believe this is going to be one of the major areas of development, too. I do not need them too much (I would love fire much better; candle light, something like torch and the size of a fireplace or something is fine).

What I see is that with each incremental update (and obviously with major ones in the future) there are more and more new, insertable objects like cars, trees, people and such. There is a long list (in the "members only" area) with these requests and many of them are acknowledged by the developers. I will ask if I can repost those lists as I believe they could indeed influence people whether they are interested.

Here is a sneak preview into the new silhouette people. They can be made gradually transparent as I read etc. Now this is also something I would not ned too much but I believe many architects will like.

[flash=650,366:1yfzsj8b]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=23686156&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:1yfzsj8b]

Gaieus

I have split a part of this topic off and it can be read here.
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=76&t=37313

marvins_dad

I'm ready for Service Pack 2!

Gaieus

They had a € 100 off sale till May 8 and I think that was about the time (or rather the second half of May) when they planned to come out. Well, better a couple of weeks later than with a buggy version.

Ecuadorian

I remember when they said the software was being released "in November". They did so on the very last day of November. Maybe we'll see Update 2 on the very last day of spring, that is, June 20.

solo

There are many factors here, this update is a pretty major one I believe, not only is there changes to the core product, there are new features, content as well as licensing changes.

Personally I'd let them take their time and get it right, I have seen too many developers commit to a date and feel obliged to release something premature with bugs and needed fixes.

EarthMover

As far as I can tell service pack 2 only contains tonemapping features. I don't think the release hold up has anything to do with working out bugs and based on the previews, it's probably been ready for a while now. It's about taking the time to take what should be SP2 features and breaking them out into plugin packs, creating a new online store to sell the users the plugins and content, reworking the software security and authorization methods to more easily connect the user to the store and generally finding more ways to boost profits. In my opinion Act 3D should've better defined their business model with Lumion from the beginning as it really is beginning to feel like they are just making it up as they go. As of now, I'm more curious as to the price of the plugins than anything else. If I end up having to pay hundreds more for the plugins, I will be really disappointed and lose a lot of faith in these developers. Hopefully we find out in next week or so.

solo

I truly want to believe that they have thought this through and not turn this into a snatch and grab. I hope that they come up with a system that content is reasonable (as it's going to be exclusive so there will be no price war from 3rd party creators) and all updates to the core app be free.

I must be honest that I'm concerned about the fact that they control all content as that limits the scope of the product to their creators, I'd really like to see 3rd party creators like Vue has at Cornucopia.

Ecuadorian

+1 to what Adam said.

Lumion's price is high enough already. When you buy a license, it should come complete, not in a "light" form. I'm also quite dissapointed with the current turn of events. At the beginning it was implied that the object library would grow without extra cost to existing customers.

EarthMover

Exactly. Looking at what you get with programs like Vue or even Modo, Lightwave, C4D, etc. (I know it's not apples to apples, but just speaking about development and support costs being reflected in the market price) Other programs, which are in the existing price range of Lumion or cheaper and continue to develop more and more features with realtime raytracing, ecosystems, rigging, physics, etc. without adding it to the pricetag, then looking at what you can actually do in Lumion Lite and it feels like you are paying extra for simplicity, speed and a lack of learning curve. (rather than complexity) Creating a more robust piece of software with all the bells and whistles at the current price would seem to bring in more new consumers, rather than hoping to meet projections and boost bottom lines by digging deeper into the pockets of the existing user base. Hopefully someone, somewhere is working on a free open source project similar to Twin Motion or Lumion to offset the scales of the marketplace and keep the costs in check.

solo

I'm thinking that a company of that size and experience will think before acting, I'm also sure that they are aware that if they price themselves out of the market and alienate the students (especially in content by having unreasonable prices) then they will face a serious pirating issue.

EarthMover

I hope you are right Pete. I just hope they stop flip flopping. Also I wouldn't be so irritated if I didn't love the software, of which I have high expectations. I also realize it's in it's infancy compared to other softs and so I haven't lost faith in them just yet. Their attentiveness to the user base and awareness (and addressing) of our concerns is encouraging. Time will tell.