Lumion - Test drive

remko

I changed my comments on hobbyists just to make you know what I mean. I think it would be awesome if people use Lumion for their hobby. I just wanted to make clear we do not want Lumion to be gimmicky. From the experience we have from our other product people create very interesting things as a hobby. For example this project was created as a hobby: http://www.quest3d.com/download/movies/Quest3D_Azure_Temple.wmv This was made in 2006 and was right up to the graphics level of many commercial projects at the time. I still think it looks nice. The guy that created that demo now works for us by the way and made the clouds and the landscape for Lumion. So in that sense we do have an interest in hobbyists it's just that Lumion is a professional tool. P.S. The materials are fully customizable. You can change texture colors and many other settings.

Gaieus

I know they are customizable (I watched the material videos, too). Can I createmy own, custom material libraries, too, or custom, insertable 3D library?

I mean I do not necessarily want to tweak the same material from project to project all the time.
Also, once I created some 3D objects (let's say "benches", so not necessarily animated ones) with all tweaked materials and such, I would like to re-use that in various projects.

So this is what I meant by "customization", not the properties of given materials.

The video is great.
I think I have seen it somewhere already (I know I've visited Quest3D before so maybe there...)

jason_maranto

Nothing to add other than thank-you... this is indeed a valuable service to keep the Sketchucation forum member abreast of a very fast growing portion of the 3D world.

Best,
Jason.

solo

Lumion released an update last week, a few fixes, and more content. I have been trying to do too many things lately like test SDS2, Thea, (another product that I cannot mention thanks to tight NDA) and Lumion.
Then there was Christmas and New year (still got a bit of a hangover)

Anyway today I loaded up an old model and ran it through Lumion , gotta say the result IMO is great, oh, look out for the kamakazi seagull....my mistake.

[flash=800,400:718fp7qt]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=18357568[/flash:718fp7qt]

meak

Bravo!
the model is beautiful.
I think one of the secrets of this software is the quality of texture and detail of the design.
nice use of lumion, perhaps with a very light mist and the camera more slowly, to enjoy the small details.
it lacks a standalone for a walk in the models.

ps: video interresting lighting inside on the forum lumion
http://lumion3d.com/forum/gallery/archinteriors/

Gaieus

@meak said:

I think one of the secrets of this software is the quality of texture and detail of the design.

That's the secret for any kind of scenes in any applications actually!

@meak said:

perhaps with a very light mist and the camera more slowly, to enjoy the small details.

True, this model would deserve it. However it seems that Pete has nicely demonstrated here how easily (and "quickly" ) a cool walkthrough can be set up.

Keep them coming, Pete. No matter there are no romans there, I am more and more tempted!

Rich O Brien

@Pete

How long was the import process for that model? And can you give .skp stats? I know this would be dependant on your rig but it might shed some light on the in's and out's of Lumion/SU integration.

Gaieus

@unknownuser said:

How long was the import process for that model?

Also the setup time in Lumion (well, this of course must depend on routine and expertise, too)
and the export time (and specs) of the animation

solo

Model:

Edges - 1089935
Faces - 590003
Components - 39
Materials - 84 (all photo textures)

Exported to Collada +/- 1 minute
Import Lumion +/- 30 seconds

Quality HD 1280x720
+/- 4 seconds per frame

The setup in Lumion was very fast, first I imported, then in edit mode I created water from texture (not water plane), threw in some trees and a few objects, went to movie mode and snapped 8 key frames and rendered out. I'd say 15 minutes total in setup.
Had I been more proficient in the navigation (which I'm getting better at) I'd have been done under 10 minutes.

I'm using an i7, with 12GB ram and a Geforce 260 GPU.
The question is... how far can you push Lumion3D?

Rich O Brien

Wish I had a look at the model at BaseCamp.

Ecuadorian

Very, very nice texturing work indeed . Was it textured in SU?

Who would have thought a simple combination of SSAO and shadow maps could bring such nice results. No photon mapping, no radiosity, no path tracing or MLT... just fast videogame tech. I tested the updated demo and it's around 20% faster.

So, have you done any tests of workflow going back and forth between SU and Lumion to make changes?

Talking about limits... Have you found a model so complex it won't fit in the video RAM of your GPU?

solo

@unknownuser said:

Talking about limits... Have you found a model so complex it won't fit in the video RAM of your GPU?]

I actually found that Lumion3D (with my GPU) can actually handle everything SU can throw at it, probably more. I tried a model that is 245MB (cripples SU) and was smooth in Lumion.

Ecuadorian

Interesting. Does your GTX 260 have 896MB or 1792MB of RAM?

If you can do everything with the 896MB model, it means any new mid-range to high-end graphics card can handle Lumion pretty good, as most start at 1024MB nowadays.

solo

I believe I got a 1Gb card, at least as far as I remember.

Here is another quick play, takes longer to upload to Vimeo than start to end of entire animation project.

[flash=800,400:1x8u80nq]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=18370475[/flash:1x8u80nq]

meak

still a great job
to the question:how far can you push Lumion3D?
a person said to have exceeded 16 million poly.

lumion fortunately has no physics engine, if a bird died in a railing to the second 19.
This is a joke

solo

Yeah, I'm killing birds, in the previous one the bird dive bombs the wharf, now it goes through the rails...

Gaieus

BTW what flying birds are there? (There are not too many sea birds around here)

solo

I must say Lumion is a lot of fun to play with, and results are fast. I would like to see more realism in future versions if it means a better grass option, more realistic trees, scalable objects and a bigger object library.
I can use this product for some current clients that want quick visuals, but for my higher end properties they'd probably want a higher more realistic result.

I tried loading up a huge to scale model of Manhattan, but could not navigate in Lumion, the scale was just too high and took much shift+ move to get anywhere.

solo

Last one for the day, no birds were harmed this time..

[flash=800,400:3bsokg7z]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=18375949[/flash:3bsokg7z]

d12dozr

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Pete. Lumion looks like it does nature well...especially water.