Thoughts on Lumion

[M V]

Just wondering what everyone thought about Lumion, good and bad. The marketing videos obviously make it look easy and very fluid, but my thoughts are that it probably requires a pretty decent graphics card and tons of memory.

 

http://youtu.be/PEeh_jDIKFk

 

The 4.0 features look impressive though and I am wondering how the arch viz community feels about Lumion. They seem to be marketing this directly to architects and not rendering artists, so my feeling is that they realize that the viz community probably shuns it off as a video game engine for designers.

[Jon Berntsen]

I am also wondering about this. Because movies are to be honest pretty hard to make with a small studio-setup. Try to render a 2 minutes movie with windy forest pack objects (grass and trees) with vray in good sampled HD format with two nodes. That would take forever. Our clients are increasingly demanding movie presentation, so, yes. ... Not to mention the time it takes to testrender.

[Scott Schroeder]

As with any real time engine, it's what you put into it that makes it work effectively. You can't throw that crap model from SketchUp with unwelded verts in there and expect anything more than 4 frames per second playback.

 

These are the "best" from the Luminon channel:

 

What I'm seeing is that Luminon is okay for exteriors and generally really weak for interiors. It looks like they are pretty much running SSAO for their diffuse lighting control. If you need animations or quick visuals and the clients are not demanding a high level of quality, then it is a viable product. Just don't ever expect it to produce render quality imagery.

 

There are also a host of online render farms to help you with animation needs if you are a small studio and they won't break the bank. Just roll that cost into your bill to the client.

 

The only thing these videos show me is that the old saying is true. Depth of field is a privilege, not a right.

Edited October 15, 2013 by VelvetElvis

[Devin Johnston]

I just tested Lumion a few months ago, to give you some background we're a medium sized architectural firm with about 120 employees. I probably do 10-20 nice animations a year and my idea was to use Lumion to do some of the quicker ones. The workflow for getting the model into Lumion, applying textures and lights and adjusting the environment is pretty strait forward. Even the process of creating the animations is easy, you don't even need a high end PC to do it. When I showed the result to my boss his comment was "we can't show that to our clients". The problem is that our office is used to seeing nice Vray animations, they may take 50 times longer to render out but there's no denying the quality is far superior. For smaller firms that don't have a render farm it's a good alternative but if you have one I don't see it doing you much good.

Edited October 15, 2013 by Maxer

[Jon Berntsen]

Hi! I noticed that Lumion 4.5 is out. I have also noticed that people tend to say that since clients are used to see v-ray renderings, they can't show Lumion-results. But I mean, take a look at the setup from their marketing videos, if it takes 10-20 times less to create one movie presentation, that is a hell lot of money. I myself use vray, but we all need to be on the alert to make sure we are adapting to the "new" markets. If a movie can be made for the cost of $5k instead of $10k, or $10k instead of $20k to make the difference bigger. Isn't that pretty much what makes you loose or win a job? So the ultimate question: Have anybody tested Lumion 4.5 yet, and how good is it actually?

[Chris MacDonald]

Hi! I noticed that Lumion 4.5 is out. I have also noticed that people tend to say that since clients are used to see v-ray renderings, they can't show Lumion-results. But I mean, take a look at the setup from their marketing videos, if it takes 10-20 times less to create one movie presentation, that is a hell lot of money. I myself use vray, but we all need to be on the alert to make sure we are adapting to the "new" markets. If a movie can be made for the cost of $5k instead of $10k, or $10k instead of $20k to make the difference bigger. Isn't that pretty much what makes you loose or win a job? So the ultimate question: Have anybody tested Lumion 4.5 yet, and how good is it actually?

 

If cost were the only factor involved, you'd be absolutely right, and certainly for "budget" practices that focus on that side of the market, it is certainly a massively cost effective time-saver... But the reality is that a lot of people here deal in high-end rendering, which Lumion (in its current state) can't deliver on.

[Scott Schroeder]

Where do you factor in the cost of Luminon in your billing? All those cool features are mostly Pro licenses which are over $4k a piece. So, compared to Vray, it's not all that cost effective when you factor in software costs. Even the stripped down version is still $2k a license. Then you need a really good video card to do it all in a decent amount of time or you'll end back up with Vray-like render times.

[numerobis]

the next version could be even more expensive if they follow their previous marketing scheme... they started with Lumion3D for 750€, then came v2 with Lumion3D PRO for 1500€ (+100%!!!) and then v3 Ultimate (to justify the higher price? - LOL) at 2800€ (?) i think and now we have v4 for 3000€...

And they knock out more than one version in 12 months and their updates are around 1000€ now.

 

Lumion is only usable for exteriors. GI is still not supported and no "real" materials. All major game engines (Unreal 4, CryEngine, Frostbite) are offering GI and physically based materials now, so why is it not available in Lumion?!? Maybe by the end of this year in Lumion 5...

[Francisco Penaloza]

if it takes 10-20 times less to create one movie presentation, that is a hell lot of money.

 

That's just publicity, it is just like the dream BIMTOPIA from autodesk, that you can export a REVIT model in to 3dMax click render and there you ave it, a photorealistic render in no time. This is not true, because the way a designer/Architect works in Sketchup or REVIT is not to make a rendering, he/she is concern of other issues and this create inconsistent geometry, materials and coplanar faces un-weld vertex and many other problems as Scott mentioned. If you create the model from scratch in REVIT or Sketchup and you export to Lumion or lumen RT or Unity or what not, you know how to prepare your model to make it work on those engines but that is not always the case.

 

There is no point to compare V Ray or any other render engine with Lumion or any real time engine, those are different media, and that is the problem, the people does not understand why they look different, if you can make understand the client, what he will get, manage his/her expectation then Lumion, or any other RT software will be cost effective, no doubts, if you can figure out a good workflow between designers and 3d Artist it will work great. But if you want to use this as a replacement or cheap variation of a V Ray/ Mental Ray animation this won't work.

 

In my case I always receive the REVIT/Sketchup model from Architects and designer, it is always though to prepare to render with V Ray/Mental Ray and a nightmare to make it work in any real time engine.

 

and yes Lumion is over priced, it is the same price of 3D Max or Maya….are you serious?

[Francisco Penaloza]

I probably do 10-20 nice animations a year and my idea was to use Lumion to do some of the quicker ones.

 

That's a lot of animations!!!!

hope you have a good team working with you, because that's a lot of work, unless of course you have over seas help

[Josef Wienerroither]

Just curious and because it somehow fits to the topic:

 

In my eyes the Nitrous viewport in Max 2014/2015 is able to create pretty good visual quality for different tasks. I wonder , does anyone take advantage of this new viewport technology, possibly with some special material or lighting tweaks applied to look good in the viewport ? For even higher quality, you would than even be able to transfer the same look over to the Quicksilver hardware renderer ( uses the same technology, but is able to bump up the quality even more). So are people here using this eg. to show off quick stills/viewport snapshots to show off ongoing work to the client ?

Additionally does anyone actually use the NPR/stylized viewport modes to generate such preview snapshots?

 

I'm asking this because i'm the developer/creator of PowerPreview, a viewport capture tool which can produce animated viewport captures in the best quality Nitrous is able to produce. I'm currently implementing some new features for an upcoming commercial version ( Project/settings managment, NPR/Stylized viewport tweaker etc.. ), which will be in the €10-15 price range

 

The current ( free ) version can be downloaded here ( has some bugs and limitations )

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/powerpreview-high-quality-nitrous-previews

 

Again - i would be glad to here some use cases where this tool might be usefull for previz and quick presentation things , or for archviz in general

 

here are some screenshots of the upcoming versions GUI and some samples

(btw: samples are produced on a 1600x1200 desktop , which shows that PowerPreview can create previews at higher resolutions than currently available on the desktop )

 

http://www.frogsinspace.at/misc/PowerPreview_Screenshot.jpg

 

http://www.frogsinspace.at/misc/PowerPreview_Techno.jpg

http://www.frogsinspace.at/misc/PowerPreview_WineGlasses.jpg

 

http://www.frogsinspace.at/misc/Powerpreview_ItooGrass.jpg

Edited May 7, 2014 by spacefrog

[Amen]

Hi,

 

we use Lumion from time to time. It has a very good import and the handling is really easy. (We tried to use Twinmotion, if anyone remebers. The most horrible software I have ever used. After that Lumion is heaven.)

 

The quality is getting better: http://byzantos.com/lumion-45-the-garden/

But I think it still takes time to achieve something like that. Custom textures...

 

The pricing is not very nice. A Max subscription seems cheaper and this is not a compliment for any software.

 

The best use, we have found, is for customers who are not used to the perfect quality of vray and times when we have to finish faster.

We usually do the modelling in a way that we can use it for vray too. Textures are standart materials with maps if needed. Not to many different, to make texturing in Lumion easier.

 

Hope this helps.

[Josef Wienerroither]

That Byzantos garden scene sure looks impressive, but the ammount of texture/modelling work put in would make it look almost equaly good in the Max viewport i bet. And keeping the scene in the host/main 3d application without a one way ticket to Lumion is a big advantage IMHO...

[Jon Berntsen]

Interesting scene. However, I just managed to start questioning why everything has to move, like even the smallest grass. And it still looks a little flat, so that combined would make it look cheap. Another thing is, for us in the visualization business, the architecture has to be the most important thing. I feel that with this software, you are putting the focus over to the wrong thing. But on the other side, most of us are trying to make a nice scene that in overall looks good, "creates the good vibe" - eighter its stills or animations. And maybe this software does exactly that? However, we also deal with photo montages, concept ideas, and many other stages/products of the very same project.

 

 

Copied from their website:

 

"Top 5 reasons why people buy Lumion

1. You can do it yourself!

Lumion enables anyone to create movies and images without any prior training. This means you can do everything yourself and you do not have to spend time or money on external visualizations. Lumion is a complete solution to create images and visualizations from start to finish. All you need is a model and Lumion will take care of the rest. With Lumion you get years of experience of computer graphics experts presented in a way that’s easy to access."

 

So... Do anybody think this would be a reality in, let's say five years?

Are we going to get forced out of the business and loose projects to those offering your clients these kind of products?

In the end, they will be blinded by the price, and hop on just to try. Some day, the quality is at a certain level vs the price, so that the client think its okay, and uses them again for their next project. This is blending with the business of visualization thread now, but really, I'd like to keep ahead here, and I think I need to put pressure on the hi-end argument for now - plus the fact that a project is so much more than the final presentation.

 

To the price. The gap between vray and lumion is closed with one or two animation projects. That is, if it's as easy as they say. Just sayin. I didn't get to test the 4.5 version though, as it was only the 3.2.1 version available for demo/free. That sucked, I really wanted to see how big a danger this software is to our industry.

 

Products will change, eventually, as well as software, so I will be following Lumion with interest, just to make sure I stay ahead.

Edited May 7, 2014 by chroma

[beestee]

I think this type of software is aligned with the future of this business. The biggest advantage of this software, and likely the biggest proponent to it's cost, is the amount of entourage content that it comes with. The second biggest advantage is how many import formats it works well with. I do believe the UE4 and Unity can be far more robust when it comes to quality of appearance, but getting a good library of entourage ready for those packages would be quite a challenge, and likely much more costly than the initial cost of Lumion.

 

Lumion has made some impressive strides with the last two major updates.

[dancross]

Hi to CGArchitect! Finally setup an account and was browsing the forums when I came across this thread. A bit old but figured it was still worth the time to post some thoughts.

 

 

Lumion does come with a bunch of content and is certainly compatible with many formats as discussed above but I think the biggest thing that Lumion brings to the table is shear speed. I can render out animations at full 1080 HD in several hours using one PC instead of a whole farm of computers and many hours. Rendered stills aren't even a challenge at all. 15 to 20 seconds for a print size at 11x17. Poster size or larger in 1 to 2 minutes.

 

 

The key is GPU. I'm running a pc with a Nvidia GTX780 6GB card and it screams through animations. For comparison, my original machine has a Nvidia GTX 580 2GB card and animations take about twice as long. I use this software every day for my business and I can't think of a better way to spend my time. You can see some samples on my site. I'd be happy to discuss anything regarding Lumion as I am a big proponent of the software. Anyone that wants a real, fully functional trial version let me know....I know someone that can get you a trial...see my profile...see my site....

[Devin Johnston]

Dan I don't think anyone is saying Lumion isn't fast, the main concern is the quality of the imagery.

[dancross]

Yeah, I've heard that comment off and on. Did you look at any of the images I've produced on my site? www.dcrossvisualstudio.com I know it isn't photoreal but I'm finding that time frames and clients aren't allowing for the long production times associated with some of the traditional methods. Anyone else seeing that more now? I've even seen some people passing Sketchup as "rendered images". Gross...

[Chris MacDonald]

They are great Lumion animations & stills, but aside from the concept/selling ideas stage it doesn't offer enough quality. I too feel the pressure with people not wanting to wait for things, but ultimately you are in charge of telling them "this is how long it is going to take".

[beestee]

The company that I work for purchased Lumion Pro last Friday. I have been messing with it every opportunity I have had this week. Most of the visualization work that is done where I work is for "selling the idea", so it seems to be a really good fit for most of our work.

 

The models that I typically get for visualization work come from sketchup or revit, unless no model is provided, then I just do it in max. I have been very impressed at the simplicity of importing and working with models from sketchup and revit, and since the Lumion license floats, I plan to do a training seminar to get others up to speed.

 

I have maybe spent 5 hours with the program this week and have already been able to produce 3 minutes of 720p video, 3 interactive models, and countless still images.

 

I will admit that there is room for improvement in certain aspects of the quality of the renderings Lumion can produce, namely in light/shadow quality, but in many areas it is far more advanced than what I could ever accomplish in max in the same time spent.

 

EDIT: nice resluts Dan

Edited June 27, 2014 by beestee

[Devin Johnston]

I know it isn't photoreal but I'm finding that time frames and clients aren't allowing for the long production times associated with some of the traditional methods.

 

I do understand this sentiment, I do think that sometimes clients are put off of doing animations because of both the time and cost. I must admit that if it comes down to not doing an animation at all or doing one with Lumion I'd rather pick doing one.

[dancross]

Interesting scene. However, I just managed to start questioning why everything has to move, like even the smallest grass.

 

 

Thought it was worth mentioning that you can adjust the amount of wind for any particular sequence or turn it off completely. The adjustability for almost every feature/special effect in Lumion is pretty good actually. I agree though, sometimes all that movement and addition of special effects is overused by some and in the end creates a "cheesy" looking animation. I think that is where the artist part comes in. No matter the software in the end it is the hands of the artist that really craft the final product. Sure there can be limitations with any given piece of software but still it is up to the artist in the end.

 

 

I enjoy reading all of your posts and value the information given on CGArch very much. Great bunch of users and a great site! Looking forward to many more discussions.

[Jason Matthews]

I have to admit. I was bitten by the Lumion bug too. That is right up until I saw the price tag. It is good software for what it does; vegetation, animations, sun and sky, water, and of course speed. What it does not do is another story. I think there is a time and place for Lumion just like there is for Vray. Treat it like another tool in your toolbox and you will be fine.

[Yama]

I don't know, to me it all still looks like a bad computer game, sorry. Compared to U4 wich comes now at 20$ per month it looks pretty boring. And for that I should spend 4000 $? No thank you.....

I agree that it takes its time to get into U4 or Unity, but hey quality always comes with a price and effort. The one-click-make-it-awesome-button will always be an illusion imo. Vray was not easy to get into it too, but its worth the effort.

If you want fast and good animations you'd rather go with sketch and toon or something like that. Good 3D does not come fast and cheap, unless you want it to look fast and cheap.

[beestee]

Good 3D does not come fast and cheap, unless you want it to look fast and cheap.

 

What is "good" is subjective, and I would qualify Lumion as capable of putting out better than good quality (see byzantos) but not quite capable of photorealistic. I will agree that Lumion provides a pathway for fast and cheap, which is not the case with many options out there.

 

I had to struggle with this as well, I prefer to always aim for the best quality possible. I am flattered when my images are mistaken for photographs and that gives me great pride, but sometimes reality does not allow for that level of attention to detail and Lumion instantly provides adequate results from many modeling packages.