Lumion - Test drive

[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]

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!

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]

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]

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.

[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..

[d12dozr]

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

[Gaieus]

I remember that building!

I dunno what your problem with the vegetation is. IMO (although not hyper-photo-realistic), it is a nice representation. And the atmosphere adds quite a lot to it.

(And true that some moving elements like water, clouds, creatures, vehicles) can add even more than that.

[Viztecture]

these are fantastic solo, its good to see some quality stuff being produced on this... i could be interested in this buisness-wise... i can't currently offer much in the way of animation services but this is attractive to me because it doesnt require much in the way of hardware or manpower something im currently lacking. With some creative post work in after effects these could be more than sufficent for what most clients are looking for.

I think its great it has smooth transitions and fairly decent high poly trees... could do with a scale tool tho! I may also have to avoid the limited selection of people otherwise it'll become an obvious lumion animation... still keep em coming!

[jamalito]

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.

wow it is great movie
but is it need to render every Scene ?
because I saw tutorial 3 in your posting every thing is animated before render is it right ?

[Ecuadorian]

A little experiment: "The Forest".

RAW Lumion output:

resized-forest8.jpg

After level adjustment in GIMP:

resized-forest10.jpg

I want to make a video, but... I would need a video editor with custom level adjustment. Perhaps a VirtualDub filter can do it?

[solo]

That looks awesome, I actually like the Raw one best, got a haze that works great.

[Ecuadorian]

Based on your preference, I kept this video untouched even though I found a way to alter levels and white balance in VirtualDub :

[Pilou]

Lyric!

Does this made with a demo version?
Does exist a limited free version in features but not limited in the time ?

[Ecuadorian]

Hi, Pilou. I bit the bullet and bought the license. I can justify its cost as I'll be using it commercially.

There's a demo with no time limit, but it can't save.

[Pilou]

but it can't save

can't save the file ok, but can it save a video?

[solo]

Yes as well as render.

[zunkian]

Hi everybody!
I am also test driving Lumion 3D which I thought was cool until........
I created a complex house with swimming pool model in SketchUp and exported it as a Collada file for Lumion
but when I tried to import it into Lumion, the model won't load and all I see is a black screen on
the import library.
Before, I can import an exported model from SU if the model is just a simple one like a box shaped house. This is when I am testing Lumion for navigation, importing models, etc....
Is there an exporting process I missed in SU?
Please help.

All the best,
Andy

[Gaieus]

Well, it is my time to take over the test drive...

This is a Roman Fort built by our member kephalos (it seems the image links are broken but here is a video on his YT channel rendered in Kerky but rather small size).

Anyway, I was giving a lecture today at a local secondary ("high") school about our latest archaeological finds in town and their 3D reconstructions and thought I'd show them something more than just boring section cuts and still renders so I put this little video together.

It is indeed a "quicky" and what I can say is that it looks like anyone can put this kind of quality together in an hour or so (including render time). Certainly the whole thing needs some more care and with about a week-end's investment, it could be stunning - but of course, not Vue level of photorealism and all.

You will notice that the walls of the fort are hovering in the air
YouTube - Lumion Test Drive - A Roman Fort 1

(render time was some 24-26 minutes at 1280 x 720)

As for the materials - on some parts I used Lumion built-in materials (just to try out how they work) but I had no time to tweak my own materials. Also, I could not import the whole model as one piece (memory issues) so I had to import the individual buildings one by one and rebuild the whole scene in Lumion. As there is no way to save custom materials for the time being, I would need to tweak the materials on each single (type of) building one by one. Also, Lumion uses normal maps and I do not have them for each material in here so that did not fit in the time frame.

It is cool however that once you import a SU model (and say tweak it to your needs), it is available for future projects so at least you can create a sort of "component library" for yourself. I have not tried to arrange these components into folders yet - I hope that works too (if not, time for a feature request).

Then made another video when I got back home.

YouTube - Lumion Test Drive - A Roman Fort 2

(render time was some 16-18 minutes at 1280 x 720)

[modelhead]

That was good....thanks gaieus. hmm?

[Gaieus]

Again, this was really just a quickie and I have not adjusted almost anything. Miguel has a nice video put together from parts made with different render engines. Now that's nice!