Review: Lumion 1.0

The simple to use interface and scaleable settings make preparing fly-throughs and renders for presentations easier than ever

(Originally published in 3D Artist Magazine)

Lumion

http://lumion3d.com/

Price

£756 / $1190

Harnessing Lumion into your arch-vis pipeline could prevent fussy clients taking pot-shots at your arch-vis work.

Recognising the need to minimise large-scale, last-minute design changes from clients, arch-vis professionals have looked to re-purposing game engines such as Source, CryEngine and Unreal Engine as real-time interactive solutions. Other benefits of working in this environment include fast rendering, easy fly-through creation and reduced production costs which can be passed on to the client. With these requirements in mind, Act-3D has released Lumion, a real-time GPU tool specifically optimised for arch-vis instead of gaming, to produce better results and with a price and functionality targeted at architects and graphics artists.

Using Lumion it’s possible to create a scene for your project without much difficulty. Landscape generation options and object placement can be edited in real-time for instant feedback. You can either edit a stock library terrain or import your own and then using sliders adjust various settings such as fog depth, cloudiness and sun position. Visually you can produce a stunning setting using the provided options, but rudimentary features such as adding lights to a scene, a common priority for arch-viz work, is not possible.

As Lumion isn’t a modeller, you have to create your architectural assets and then import. This is a streamlined process and most common file formats are catered for, but artists will still need to create assets and respond to indecisive clients requesting changes, make changes and then re-import into Lumion, limiting its usefulness. You’re then ready to complete your scene and a content library – some of which is animated - is available, containing a variety but not extensive, collection of assets that include plants, trees, water, materials, people, animals, vehicles and furniture. Although useful, re-using these prefab assets can potentially becoming boring.

With everything setup you can output a fly-through movie or still render which is very fast and easy to do, and means you’re not limited to a target platform. Sadly you cannot export from Lumion to a 3D exchange format for use in other packages as it is meant for creation of movies and images only. While Lumion will be useful in some situations its hard to see past its limitations and you pretty much have to do what your already doing in a 3d application such as placing models, texturing and environment setup. If speed is a defining factor and you don’t have time for a complex render, or you’re hosting a presentation, then Lumion can be just the tool you need.

Summary

An extremely easy to use GPU real-time package but isn’t any threat to other render engines.

Fill your pool with one of the six realistic animated content library water types available to choose from.

Populate your urban cityscapes with lots of vehicles, entourage, buildings and trees without a big performance hit.