MBetke

Thanks Devin. Workflow is pretty easy: You model your geometry based on your plans or like you work. Then unwrap (box unwrapping could be also done in Lumion) if needed and apply some standard materials. Then export to Lumion. Lumion can lift pretty high-poly models and has a solid import. I think even from Revit or Sketchup. Then you adjust your materials with sliders and use the library to populate your scene with additional content. If you need a movie you can make camera-paths like if you operate a real camera. Then add some built-in post-effects and render to a movie or single screenshots. I do single screenshots and make some post editing in AE usually. Rendering speed depends on the nature of the used effect or quality level. Ususally around 8-13sec a frame in best quality. But I also saw people with GI, planar reflections and extra lights telling about 30sec for a frame in FullHD. Really depends. All in all it is quite fast for most scenes. But like many people critize it is no classical renderer in terms of quality. At some point you can only gain speed if you loose quality. But I think it is well balanced and depends on the artist (as usual). Mostly the time involved for good materials and post makes the difference.

I have two Titans here and ever worked with Gaming-GPUs. I never had one failed. It is quite easy: If you need advanced support, and double precision calculation plus error checked vram then go with a Quadro. Otherwise gaming-gpus will be your choise. I do a lot of long rendering with GPU and never had a hardware fail. And even if I had there are things like warranty and you could get a new card overnight making "advanced" support from Nvidia obsolete. Also the Titan chip is based on K110 but with 14 instead of 15 clusters activated. Basically Nvidia used the "good" chips for the pro-series and farms. And the ones with a faulty on for Titan. Other vendors doing the same to maximize revenue. Like Intel, if a core or two didn't make it through QA they are used as a quadcore or something like that. Display performance in 3dsmax is very fast with a gaming gpu too since Nitrous. While back in Max2010 a Quadro really gave you lots of viewport speed but this changed. I work with DWG plans, multi-million tris meshes and many materials. All fine and smooth using Nitrous. Last thing: You get a great gaming-rig using gaming-gpus. ;)

Motly I do them with splines and Sweep modifier. Nothing special. I used to use the parametric ones from 3dmax but not for close-ups.

I usually buy cars from Humster3D. Plenty of everything there.

Replacing 3dsmax is nonsense. Maybe price-wise but not technically. I'm a heavy Lumion user since first day and indeed it is a good tool filling the gap between high-end animation and cost sensitive clients needing good looking solutions for a fair budget. Lumion got work intensive with its planar reflections and GI since version 3.0 but still lacks of multi-GPU support. On the other hand my two Titan GPUs are eating frames for breakfast using Octane Render so I start to move with with my animations a bit more back to the classical approach. This may shift back again if Lumion got better multi-gpu support. You can take a look at my YouTube channel for movie made with Lumion. Also some large scale projects are there. I also made a first runner up for a lumion contest you can watch there: http://www.youtube.com/user/pure3dviz

I entered with a 286 PC. it had 1Mb Ram and 12Mhz. When Wing Commander 2 was released I had to buy a new harddisk because my 20MB Drive were full. One good thing compare dwith today is that you never run out of discspace because you know how to use it properly.

Thanks its exactly what you guys also seem to get. I end up now with redoing all splines manually because the mess is just to big and unpredictable. On a lucky note some elements from one level are the same on the lever higher with different fassade elements. So its not that bad but still a lot of monkey-work.... I wonder why those small things dont work these days. Autodesk releases tons of "interop" functionality and their marketing is cooking about but getting a clean drawing where I only need to hide some unneeded stuff would be king and save me really the big work sometimes.

I have a large DWG plan file with around 9 levels I need to visualize. I cleaned from the usual junk like texts and not needed elements but got very bad extrusion results. Missing faces, inverted face...a whole mess. Is there any magic trick I can do to normalize the faces except the "normal" modifier (I use 3dsmax) and the little "Unify Flip Normal" script which is around? Seems very time consuming to redo the whole floorplans from scratch with new splines/meshes by hand.

I like it. Everyone here can imagine that commercial work usually has another working setting from points of time, money and clients input. So I really appreciate it. I want to participate since 2009/2010 now but this year I definitly will sent in stuff for real-time. I think the category will get spammed again with Lumion vids, hehe. Looking forward to the awards and the good work we will see!

Studio/Institution: Pure3d Visualizations Germany - digital essences Client: Case-Study Genre: Residential Interior Software: 3ds max, Octane Render, Photoshop Website: http://pure3d.de Description: I finished my interpretation of House-N which I'm facinated for a longer time now. Last year I was about to do this project with a real-time engine as a showcase for lighting but never finished it. Now it was time to do some showcase art work for Pure3d to show clients in a brochure what I can do beside all this real-time solutions I offer for clients marketing. This project came into my mind again and I did it like if someone already lifes there for a year or two. I used Octane Render this time to get a better feeling on the ups and downs of the renderer but have to say that I'm pleased with it. My focus was on lighting and camera angles. A little bit post in photoshop. All views rendered with the new "pmc" kernel out of Octane.

Indeed. I'm always amazed about the magic what small scripts can do. I can't live without some of them.

Okay, then: The white plasters bump is too much at some spots. The foreground trees are not looking very natureal and need more detailing in my opinion. SOmething is wront with the path to the stairs. MAybe some handles so noone can fall down there. This is the most stuff which jumped in my eye.

I used to work with landscape architects two times and it was difficult to communicate that the plants won't look 100% like in nature. It was a real-time viz so a tree can't be more than 2000tris or so. The problem was also that landscape architect wanted saturated and green colors but the building architect had another look in mind. To bring those two together and tell that vegetation in 3d can't be matched too the special needs without additional costs needs to be communicated. At the end we did a good solution and everyone was pleased. but it was a process to understand how 3D works.

I have to disagree on some of the things beeing said here. First you don't need to use modular workflow if you use a game-engine for Viz. You don't even have to stay stricktly within polygone limits like if you do a game. The reason is simple: You don't have to optimize the scene for a wide audience. If your client wants an interactive presentation you have to optimize the scene for his target specs and nothing more. Modular building is used to re-use assets on level or even several levels. If you do an interiour design you have your assets and thats it. In engines like Lumion3D you can use any texturesize and you are not bound to power of two sizes. You can even export high-res meshes with over one million polygones with a few clicks. Using real-time engines for projects needs his own workflow. It's a bit of hybrid between developing for a game or doing a 3d rendering scene. For me with my game-dev background i found it easier to spent some polies here and there on scenes as having to optimize meshes all the time. And quality can be really great in real-time if existing tech is used clever like on this project (not mine): http://www.ronenbekerman.com/forums/finished-work/1139-loft-interactive-unity-3d.html For me it was an advantage using real-time up to now because I can sell it to clients as something new and innovative if they can have their customers walking around in their new home or even exchange objects on the fly (depending on needed 3d solution).

Yes if you dont use a lot of vegetation high-res assets. MEmeory is bound to the GB of the GPU you have like most GPU renderers. I totally agree. I got a animation job and did some tests for it. Basically I need to render around 130 furnished 80° top down turntable animations in a DVD resolution for a client to showcase his apartments. I tried Maxwell and it was not useable for this task because every second counts and I dont want to do it on a renderfarm. With Octane I can do it in a blaze 2min vs. 30sec per frame. Its a big differene if you multiply 100frames * 130 clips * 120second or 30seconds plus the voxelisation and export time for each frame. Sticking with Maxwell would need A) a hired renderfarm or B) my own one with rendernodes. On the other hand Maxwell is designed for people which need physical correct calculation and its still best in this task.