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Talk About Karma..


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Seriously though.

A few months ago I was talking so much trash about Sketch-up and Lumion; Well not really trashing the software itself but how "professionals" in the industry see these software packages as "replacements" for 3D Max and Vray. Anyhow, fast forward a few months and I find myself working for a firm that almost exclusively utilizes Sketch-up and Lumion to produce their Viz content..... and I'm the new Visualization Specialist...... utilizing those to exact packages that I was talking so much trash about........ Karma wins again and the Universe is teaching me a lesson. *Sigh*:confused:

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...I'm the new Visualization Specialist...

 

Congratulations on the new job!

 

Learning to use different tools to do your craft can be a good thing. SketchUp is fine, until you try to do a complex model with it. You can add vray to go with it for times you can convince your new bosses that Lumion isn't good enough, or you'll find ways to make it good enough.

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Little by little, ...........just go with the flow in the beginning.

 

Then after a couple of months, just casually bring it up................you guys ever hear of 3ds Max?..............what about V-ray?

Edited by heni30
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At the beginning I also had some questioning regarding Lumion or Twinmotion, both of them present them self in a very arrogant way promising to 'totally replace' traditional raytracer systems. Time proved that there is a big difference between them but each engine has its place in our industry.

 

Lumion/Twinmotion give the not trained designer the possibility to create presentations with very little prep time, also give them a very large library of assets that can enhance/or not help their presentations :) For all this, I think this is a very strong point. But if we keep it like that, when you start to push further then is when Lumion/Twinmotion tools fall apart.

 

For us as Visualization professionals, we should learn and be able to use any tool that we have in our reach, yes maybe a 'simple' tool as Lumion won't be soul rewarding as a traditional raytracer engine, but if time is short and quality is not the main goal then that software are the best tool for the job.

 

As mentioned by George, maybe if you can showcase how much further you can go with a full raytracer engine or how much flexibility you get, maybe they can accept the extra time or change in workflow. Then you may be able to have two tier of quality/output to offer to your designers.

 

Sketchup/VRay is a very strong combo, unless you need animations there is not much necessity to go with 3D Max. Just the exercise of exporting Sketchup to 3D Max can get very complicated or not justified depending of the project of course.

 

Where I work we have different rendering tools and I use all of them depending on the type of work, I just finished an animation in Lumion for a quick run competition, there was no way with that deadline and the number of changes that we had to develop the same animation with VRay.

 

Now if this was a higher level competition project then I would ask for more time so I could use VRay/3DMax instead.

 

Congrats on your new position, and as you tile said, Visualization Specialist, now it is up to you to show and recommend the best tool for the job. The new Lumion has advanced a lot in final quality output, there are still many quirks but it is very impressive what 'real time' engines can do today.

 

The funny thing to me is these engines Lumion/Twinmotion have a real competitor growing in their same area, software such Unreal and Unity are also real-time/game based engines and when they develop a more close workflow between 3D Max, Cinema4D, Sketchup or similar software then there will be many of us that won't go back to these one-click solution tools.

 

Who is the render Killer now LOL

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In recent times we are being asked more and more to produce NPR images, interestingly Lumion is turning out to be a viable option for this. We are in the process of stress testing and sorting out workflows.

 

its no Off-line render but it might just be able to fill a gap

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In recent times we are being asked more and more to produce NPR images...

 

Do you mean plain looking...?

 

Hey!

 

Actually I was considering that Lumion might be really good for my NPR, if I can stylize the results or at least feed good multipass to Photoshop. As I always say, you make your money in post.

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Yours look fine. The birds eye buildings are working but the bleachy yellow sun and blotchy street are distracting.

 

There's a free app that Scott turned me onto - FotoSketcher - that I was very surprised by. Very capable and nice user interface.

 

Does Lumion come with artistic filters built in?

Edited by heni30
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I am not sure what the workflow was for the Lumion version other than it was far quicker than what we were expecting. Sure with a bit more finessing it could be taken to the next level. That project was interesting because one of bits of feed back we got was that there was too much detail and they want a really stripped back version for the next round. Almost like a warm up gesture drawing when you are doing life drawing.

 

The Vray version turned out to be quite a lot more labor intensive to achieve a relatively simple result. Combining multiple render elements, with multiple versions of render and then a heap of playing in Photoshop. Certainly not a one-click solution.

 

In the end it was decided that it wasn't worth the effort to do it with Vray, especially if there would be multiple views of multiple design versions. Logistically a nightmare.

 

We have just completed a competition, where all the rendering was done in Lumion. I am interested in the outcome after we debrief.

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I feel the bird's eye is really close - if the blocked out areas were a bit more consistent lines-wise it would be spot on - there's a difference between loose and sloppy looking.

Edited by heni30
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and that is where I find digital NPR rendering falls down, it struggles with line consistency and the weight of the line along its length, like that what you get with a good hand drawn picture which gives so much character and depth to a drawing. Its close but not quite right.

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Here is the thing, Lumion is not designed to thinker around it, all of our trick and traditional manipulation with layers and all that, does not apply, because it was designed for one-click solution, and that's is the strength of the software and also it fall.

 

We, the old visualization artist, are used to doing our way, pre-render, get passes manipulate in post twist physics and what not, in this real-time world many of those things are not used, some of them will but is not the same workflow.

 

I take Lumion for what it is, an easy simple app that gives you a good enough images, many of them, and panoramas, and videos. You can have a non-photoreal rendering or 20 of them, then you can have a photoreal panorama of the same scene, or a non-photoreal panorama, and a video just in case.

 

I guess the main problem for us is to accept our traditional workflow does not apply and that clients or designer that are not trained or used to traditional raytracers, they don't see the difference, and they are just happy because they get it fast, so now instead of having a precious single image, they can have 20 disposable ready to scratch over and do other review session.

 

Technology is advancing and changing pretty fast, hope many of you saw yesterday the presentation for Datasmith/UnrealStudio, that's a game changer itself. I see people like us more close of that workflow than Lumion or Twinmotion, unreal will let you do more trick and twist that is impossible to do in Lumion alike, but, again, time invested to get good output is on the balance now. It is not about quality alone anymore, we like it or not.

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  • 1 month later...
at the beginning i also had some questioning regarding lumion or twinmotion, both of them present them self in a very arrogant way promising to 'totally replace' traditional raytracer systems. Time proved that there is a big difference between them but each engine has its place in our industry.

 

Lumion/twinmotion give the not trained designer the possibility to create presentations with very little prep time, also give them a very large library of assets that can enhance/or not help their presentations :) for all this, i think this is a very strong point. But if we keep it like that, when you start to push further then is when lumion/twinmotion tools fall apart.

 

For us as visualization professionals, we should learn and be able to use any tool that we have in our reach, yes maybe a 'simple' tool as lumion won't be soul rewarding as a traditional raytracer engine, but if time is short and quality is not the main goal then that software are the best tool for the job.

 

As mentioned by george, maybe if you can showcase how much further you can go with a full raytracer engine or how much flexibility you get, maybe they can accept the extra time or change in workflow. Then you may be able to have two tier of quality/output to offer to your designers.

 

Sketchup/vray is a very strong combo, unless you need animations there is not much necessity to go with 3d max. Just the exercise of exporting sketchup to 3d max can get very complicated or not justified depending of the project of course.

 

Where i work we have different rendering tools and i use all of them depending on the type of work, i just finished an animation in lumion for a quick run competition, there was no way with that deadline and the number of changes that we had to develop the same animation with vray.

 

Now if this was a higher level competition project then i would ask for more time so i could use vray/3dmax instead.

 

Congrats on your new position, and as you tile said, visualization specialist, now it is up to you to show and recommend the best tool for the job. The new lumion has advanced a lot in final quality output, there are still many quirks but it is very impressive what 'real time' engines can do today. jobs in dubai

 

the funny thing to me is these engines lumion/twinmotion have a real competitor growing in their same area, software such unreal and unity are also real-time/game based engines and when they develop a more close workflow between 3d max, cinema4d, sketchup or similar software then there will be many of us that won't go back to these one-click solution tools.

 

Who is the render killer now lol

looool

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