New Lumion & Twin Motion

[Devin Johnston]

So both of these packages have new versions and as always the demo's look amazing and I'm finding it harder and harder to justify why I haven't purchased one of them yet. I think they could be very useful in situations where there just isn't enough time to wait for a traditional Vray animation. On top of that the tools and content the Pro versions come with make adding crowds, cars and animated foliage a breeze. I've tried the demo's for both packages in the past, the quality of the imagery was a little disappointing which is why I stayed away but these new versions seem to have passed a threshold that the previous versions could not.

 

What do you guy's think about the potential of these packages to take over some of the animation load of a studio in lieu of higher end animation? Do you think one of them is more useful or better than the other?

 

http://lumion3d.com/new-in-lumion-6

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lL1eFi-tG9A

[Scott Schroeder]

Lumion 6 has made leaps and bounds improvements in their quality and I really think there is a niche for them in a lot of architecture places. As a landscape renderer, TwinMotion is really good but falls behind Lumion 6 for architecture in my opinion. Lumion will probably give you the most bang for your buck and will probably have better support. It is getting harder to not purchase one of these for general, hey that's pretty good quality, architecture rendering.

 

However both are almost price restrictive for smaller studios, which if you are going to go this route you should probably buy Lumion Pro. Though at least Lumion has floating licenses, where TwinMotion is individual licenses. Also, don't forget you'll need to invest in a decent graphics card so factor that cost in there. I'd say a GTX 970 would probably suffice, so about $300 or so on top of the license cost.

 

You can't even compare these two to UE4 (I'm sure some will try to) as they aren't in the same league. UE4 has had many more years of development with much larger teams and an endless supply of funding from the games industry. These two are very specific out of the box ready use for architecture.

[RyderSK]

I have to say I am pretty impressed about Lumion6 video they posted.

 

It has:

Screen space reflections.

Some sort of GI... didn't research but looks like something like LPV ? It's "ok-ish" for Lumion type of look, without the need to light-bake, which no one would do in this software.

Some premade area reflection captors for glass..so by default the glass actually looks more impressive than Unreal4 with pure SSR/captors :- )

 

Generally, seems like excellent tool for some internal development.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Where I work we have Lumen RT, quality wise seems pretty cool. What is more to like is that it works inside sketchup. so nothing really new to learn(for architects) just the export.

Having said that, when exporting is a gamble, you never know if it will crash or will work. It is very hard to debug when something is not working.

We are deciding between Lumion or Twinmotion, with the latest release both of them seems very good. But the development of Lumion seems more consistent and every release it just gets better.

One thing that really bugs me is the interface. it does not feel a professional tool, icons all over, that bouncing over scale arrow is just crazy.

Twinmotion in that side look a lot better, but they stayed dorm for how many years before the last big release?? 2 years?

 

Price wise, twin motion seems OK, Lumion is the same price of 3D Max??... that seems a little far of IMO.

[Scott Schroeder]

Yeah Lumion Pro is expensive, but you get much more than just software with the Lumion cost. Heck, to either buy those UE4 ready models from the UE4 Store/Evermotion/etc you'd spend easily just as much as the Lumion Pro cost. You'd probably spend 100 times that in cost creating those yourself. In the long run, it is a justifiable cost. But it is a tough cost to take on all at one time.

 

It would be nice in the future to see from them subscription based licenses and even more so, an al-la cart model choose option. For example, you'd have a lower base cost, then have say 3-4 levels to choose from. 50 models, 500 models, 1,000 models, all models. I would have to imagine that in their entire model library, you'd find yourself using the same ones over and over again.

[Devin Johnston]

What about the stand alone executable they have, does it work well? I've looked around and can't really find any examples and that's one thing I'd like to be able to use in meetings.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Yes, it it true that you are not only paying for the software, and the large content has a price tag.

I also agree with you that there should be an option if you don't want all that content. In our case, we are planing to use this technology in early stage of design, so at the most we will place a few trees and maybe a person or two, but most of the time will be the building alone or with some boxes as environment.

 

I tried the stand alone player from Twinmotion, (You can download samples from their website now) it play very nice, the loading time seems pretty long any ways, it could be nice if the put an actual progress bar instead the word "work in progress" that does not say much what's really going on.

 

I think Lumion ability to create VR panoramas is a big plus, with the new trend of VR gear and players, have the ability to create VR images to review design seems pretty useful.

[Jason Matthews]

I am really liking the new development from Lumion. Each and every release has improved on their features and htey have made it faster with each release too. Lumion handles large scenes with ease and for the most part you don't know you are dealing with a lot of models or large scenes because it handles the polygons that effectively. The content library is pretty damn good too! Of course you can add your own models and entourage if you want, but really there is no need unless it is specific to your scene.

 

My drawback has always been the price. At $3200 its a big pill to swallow, especially after the investment in Max, Vray, etc. I am really turned off by their lack of subscription. Maybe I have been spoiled by Autodesk and such, but I really don't have the money to pay that cost every year. I truly believe that their target audience is the architectural firm (via their marketing materials) and not the individual designer/renderer. If you think about it, they made this software to be a valid alternative to the CG community, by removing the skill set of having to learning the software.

 

Just my 2 cents.

[Scott Schroeder]

To be fair, I'm fairly certain Lumion is a one time cost with free updates. You only pay when a major release comes out. It's very similar to Vray.

 

Hopefully Lumion is looking at what Epic is doing with the UE4 marketplace and they adopt something similar in future releases in order to drop the initial price a bit.

[Chris MacDonald]

The reflections on that new Lumion demo were impressive. I always felt that was what let the previous versions down. Somehow everything still looks a bit fake, but it's certainly headed in the right direction - a few more years and it might be justifiable (for me) to jump ship.

[M V]

As a Lumion 5 user I can tell you that it has been fun, fast, really easy to work with, call it the SketchUp of rendering and animation, if you will.

 

I do find some of the included 3D models and style effects a little cheesy and not useful, but for the most part, I can import a model, add entourage and render out 15 views in a day. Reloading your updated model takes seconds and all material settings are kept.

 

I am looking forward to upgrading to 6. It seems that they did make some huge improvements focusing on the realism of materials such as glass and reflective materials as well as their AO engine. They also pushed their Hyperlight feature to the max by removing the noise it generated. I think you need to shell out the extra Take note that the reflections are not raytraced though, they are what they are calling SpeedRay reflections which are screen-space reflections only.

 

 

When I do upgrade to 6, I will report back. In the meantime, I have attached a file that someone posted in the Lumion forums, comparing a 5 rendering to 6. The results are impressive really.

[beestee]

You can't even compare these two to UE4 (I'm sure some will try to) as they aren't in the same league. UE4 has had many more years of development with much larger teams and an endless supply of funding from the games industry. These two are very specific out of the box ready use for architecture.

 

Remember Quest3D? Lumion evolved from there. Although Lumion and UE4 are very different from each other today, they are based on very similar technologies although the Lumion core has historically run on older Direct X technology, likely explaining the differences in visual fidelity, but at the same time explaining the approachability for the architecture industry.

[tianxiaowang1]

Hi Devin,

Did you tried the stand alone executable file from Twinmotion finally? What do you think about it?

[Michael J. Brown]

... If you think about it, they made this software to be a valid alternative to the CG community, by removing the skill set of having to learning the software...

 

DISCO! You hit the nail on the head.

 

I'm not going to bother 'sounding the alarm', as it were. But you must know that it's only a matter of time (maybe 5 to 10 years, I'd imagine) before the need for 'base level' rendering services shrinks drastically. Sure, you'll still have the small arch firms and the real estate developers who can't afford the software/hardware investment, and furthermore have no intention of payrolling someone to just sit around doing visuals all day. But make no mistake, whenever it becomes this easy to create decent looking imagery, the amount of work available to freelancers will eventually be effected.

 

Just look at what the likes of WIX.com did to the independent web designer/developer. Sure, there are still web designers gainfully employed. But now their clients are limited to the higher-end of the spectrum. The ones who know the value of a site designed around their specific needs. But the soccer mom who makes jewelry on the side and just wants an e-commerce site to sell it on won't pay a 'real' designer for what she can get using a plug&play template.

 

Ultimately, I don't doubt that Lumion (and others) could end up doing for arch viz what WIX did for website design.

 

 

just my 2-mites.

[rasululamin]

Hello

Good Day

I m new here. Working As interior Designer In Bangladesh.

I need a support regarding lighting issue in Lumion. I use 3Ds max to prepare model and trying to render in lumion. Most of the thing are still ok to me but I have failed to find the option of hidden light from ceiling. Here i hv attached a ref file. If anyone know the techniques, please guide me.

Thanks

 

Rasulul Amin Murad