For Quest3D 2 we try to improve the quality on multiple levels. We have a new algorithm to remove z-fighting and we changed the way we do reflections. These are the two most common reasons for glitches in a movie. We also completely rewritten the entire gfx engine. Models in the library now have normal map and more material properties. It looks great on furniture. There's a completely new lighting system which allows for spot lights and we expanded the materials so all materials can have reflection and glossiness. The ambient occlusion has also been rewritten for better quality and speed.

We want Lumion to be the fastest way to create architectural movies and we'll continue improving quality. The quality of a movie is not only in the shaders and technical stuff. We believe it's a creative process so it should be easy to make a scene 'feel' nice. There are many objects in in the library to add nice details like the birds and fishes for example. They are not essential for architecture but they help making things come alive. At some point we would really love to add things like walking crowds (some people already created movies like this by placing many characters). In regular animation software details like these cost an enormous amount of skill and time. We try solving this by hiring artist to create content and developing new technologies that make life easier. One example is the camera system. We know that many people have a huge trouble creating a decent camera path. The Lumion camera does things automatically and you only have to worry about which key shots you want to show.

Lumion is specialized for architecture in the sense we optimize for pure architecture visualization so we focus on the features architects care about. Examples are solid importing of CAD models and the ability to make cross sections of your model. You can download the free version which has a limited content library and output options and usually that's enough for people to decide to buy Lumion.

You'll need a pretty good gfx card. We created Lumion in this way to to get the best end results. We wouldn't be able to deliver the quality we have right now if we focused on low end 3D cards. Our absolute minimum is a GeForce 8800 but it's definitely worth it to invest in Geforce 480, 480 or one of the lower end models like a 560.

Sorry guys about the long download for Lumion but when the update came online it was a frenzy. There's a 1GB pipe but apparently it was not enough. SP2 has been a great update for us and it looks like all the users agree. The first results are pouring in at the moment and the quality looks much better than service pack 1. We are now heavily working to improve he quality of the trees. Results are amazing so far.

There have also been many requests to include more tree types and they will be coming! We have much better small plants and grass lined up and users are collaborating in the forum to settle on a collection of new palms.

We're also in the process of polishing the latest service pack and we hope to deliver a new version this week. The new version has many bug reports resolved and improved GUI tweaks. We also managed to improve the rendering of trees and plants in general.

I agree that it would be nice to find a way to add your own objects to the object library. Currently all your objects are stored in one big library but I was thinking about a solution which stores all objects in per-project library and give you the option to move them into a permanent library so they become part of the main object library so to speak. If these library files are easy to transfer and distribute you will be able to share them on the forum. It's just an idea but I think it will work.

In the mean time, check out some of the awesome movies I found from SP2 because they clearly show how much of a change SP2 really is:
[flash=600,360:368vv6gk]http://www.youtube.com/v/_-rwcVEjbH4#ws[/flash:368vv6gk]
[flash=600,360:368vv6gk]http://www.youtube.com/v/5LqqM4gNK8I#ws[/flash:368vv6gk]

I did some work to increase realism today. My goal was to create tonemapping that's more similar to VRAY. We use HDR tone mapping that has a game-like look. I created a new tone map routine which will be user configurable so users will be able to select different looks for different purposes. I made a post on our forum with some examples of HDR tone mapping that's more suitable for architectural visualization:
http://lumion3d.com/forum/development-inside-info/realistic-look-instead-of-game-look/

Hello I'm working on Lumion and we are preparing some improvements for the next update.

I like the neutral look of the TM2 shots and I like the grass. Shouldn't be too difficult to get it like that in Lumion. Our next target for the next update is to offer better lighting. Is there any chance you can provide me with the model you used for TM? I'd like to do some comparisons between Lumion and TM2.

I'm sure we can get better quality than the TM2 shots with that scene because we use more sophisticated lighting and in the next update this will improve even more.

Thanks!

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.

Hi, I'm Remko, one of the programmers of Lumion and I'm honored this board wants to review Act-3D's little tool I decided to join in on the conversation to clarify things when needed and also to see what's happening here so we can feed it back into the development process.

First, let me explain a bit about Lumion. Act-3D decided to build Lumion because we saw that a huge portion of our customers was using our 3D engine for architecture visualization. We also saw there was only a very small crowd that was capable of writing shaders and other difficult things.

In short Lumion is a tool designed to make it very easy to create architecture visualization. It's not designed to let you do everything but we designed it so you can get decent results very quickly. We are not pretending to be a tool similar to 3DS Max but instead we want to provide an alternative option. The core of our idea behind the product is that it should be accessible to anyone. Anyone should be able to create a movie. Some people might not create movies as nice as highly skilled artists but still we want Lumion to be easy and quick so everybody can use it.

So, that's a little bit of background, here's what you want to know:

Reflections: They can look odd because we do not use ray-tracing. Ray-tracing takes hours so to get reflective surfaces we generate a cube map which is used to approximate reflections. We do have some plans for accurate reflections on flat surfaces. On curved surfaces it's usually hard to see you are looking at fake reflections because of the distortion. In the next update you have the ability to position the reflection map grab position, reducing obvious flaws to a minimum. After that you'll see more improvements with each update.

Animation: You can animate elevators, people, cars etc.. but it's all very simple now. Act-3D wanted to start simple and expand. Right now you can define a linear movement or rotation for each object for every scene. Even though we might expand the animation capabilities you can expect everything to be simple. People should walk automatically and wheels should spin automatically - that sort of thing. There are even some wild ideas about automatic crowd animations and traffic. It's all technically doable so who knows where we will go in the future.

Focus: Our focus is 100% on professionals creating visualizations. I mean architects and artists. I must confess this was a topic that came up several times during development. Because of the GUI and the simplicity people might think it looks like a game. It's not. It's a professional tool with specific professionals in mind. When we started the GUI was more colorful and I mad it minimalistic black and white to make it look a bit more serious. We are quite satisfied with the GUI though. In the end I think people will appreciate what we've done in terms of the GUI. We wanted something that 'just works'.

Sketch-up integration: Right now Lumion is young. Lumion exists for one month now (our other software is available for 10 years now). As time progresses Lumion gets more users and more users means Act-3D can do more. Act-3D can definitely see the value of tighter Sketch-up integration. One of the key goals of Lumion was to offer quick workflow between Sketch-up and Lumion. The main thing in Lumion now that exposes this is the reload button. If you change your model in Sketch-up you can hit a reload button to update the model in Lumion. Act-3D worked a lot in visualization and I know from experience a lot time is lost updating the visualization of the model to the latest version of the model. With features like this Act-3D tries to make things easier.

Limited options/ customization: Act-3D thinks that Lumion already has a huge variety of models, landscapes and other options. The logical way for the future is more of this. Each update will offer more content and more features. Act-3D sees customization as an advanced feature so more options will appear for tweaking the landscape, providing your own textures but we want to be very careful with our GUI. We do not want to pile feature upon feature to end up with a tool which has enormous complexity. Act-3D thinks even very complex things can be presented in a clear and transparent way.By the way, you can already import any content you want and sue your own textures/configuration for materials. I saw a guy that made a mod, changing all tree textures so the trees had snow on them. Although not our intend it's a creative solution. You could create a custom sky by just importing a huge dome with a texture on it. If you hit the ctrl key you get many options to customize the look. We will expand features like this in the future. Act-3D is doing a lot of research at the moment about lighting, depth of field, post processing and quality improvement. As time progresses you will see a lot more options to create a distinct look.

Advertisement: Act-3D not sponsoring anyone on this website. Act-3D does not believe playing tricks on customers is a good way of doing business. Of course we want to get good reviews but the most sensible way to do this is by making great software. If it's crap let us know so we can make it better. Fortunately the overall the reactions until now are quite positive. Act-3D's approach is that you can find out for yourself. We're too small to do massive advertisement campaigns so our best bet is the software sells itself. Reviews are a great help for this.