Vray Pro to Lumion

[Graphite]

Hey all;

Have a question for ya'll.

 

I'm a 3DMax/Vray Veteran and recently took on a Specialist roll at a firm that wants to push their rendering capabilities to "the next level". Unfortunately they're currently utilizing Sketch-up as their main design tool, and Lumion as their primary render. So far, the quality that i'm getting out of these two apps are not to the level I expect. I'm pushing them pretty hard; loading up higher quality textures, maxing out settings, ect. but to no avail. Anyone have an recommendations as to how I can improve my output while keeping their existing workflow? Or should I bite the bullet and push them into Vray/Max/ Unreal?

 

A big issue I keep hearing is "Lumion can put out x images in x LESS time, over vray." (this is from forums), but Knowing Vray like I do; its not impossible to get great quality images with low render times that are comparable.. Anyhow #LookingForAFriend.

 

-Nolan

[Graphite]

Upon doing some reading and research I came across an Image and noticed that they seemed to have copied an Evermotion image that was produced in Max/Vray.

Left Image is Lumion, Right Image is Evermotions

[Francisco Penaloza]

Here is my take on lumion,

I have a similar setup here at my company. I am the Render specialist, but Architects want to do render themselves, 100's of images with the 'same quality' that I get from V Ray in a fraction of time

 

So yes Lumion can output very nice images, the latest version improved greatly the GI solution so it looks very nice, Having said that the workflow of Lumion it been prepared as a single button solution, so you don't get the same flexibility than VRay for instance. And here is where things get confusing, I always tell people you should not fight that, the 'advantage' of Lumion is that, less work more images faster. If you need better quality, then you need to put some love on them, better textures, modeling, and Photoshop post work.

 

In your case I would recommend doing the same, embrace all the quality that you can get out of Lumion, Photoshop works around if you fancy, but do not expect V Ray quality, the Gi engine is different it won't happen. It can get very good, don't get me wrong but there are limitations.

 

IMO for the everyday images, whatever you get out of Lumion is OK, if you want to step up the quality then you need to work more and use Photoshop at the end, and if you need the top of the creme quality, then you need to use top of the creme software.

 

 

Unreal will be the dream come true for Visualization, but as it is, for now, if your Architects can't make Lumion look as they need, just forget about Unreal, because it is way more complicated, not a single button solution at all.

 

BTW Sketchup is not a bad solution either, it is not as complex like 3D Max, but several Architectural projects, may be as good as it gets, using V Ray or Corona, the only difference is the hands of the user.

[Devin Johnston]

I'm in the same position as well, I've been working with Vray, Lumion and Unreal and while I like Unreal's potential it's lacking in many areas that Lumion isn't, like entourage. What I've decided is that for the time being Vray will be used when high end imagery is needed and Lumion will do everything else. I'm going to keep an eye on Unreal and Datasmith's development and hopefully that will mean all the entourage I've built up in Vray will transfer over eventually.

 

I'm of the opinion that Chaos Group will have to address the render time dependency sometime soon because they are looking at the loss of many of their customers over this issue. I for one am beginning to have a hard time justifying paying for 100 render nodes and workstation licenses for software that's 10-50 times slower than Unreal or Lumion even if the quality is better. Not to mention that using Lumion is stupid easy and Vray isn't, not that I care about that anymore but it is a factor.

[Lewis Garrison]

We've been beta testing Datasmith with Unreal and its pretty much a one click solution. Chaos Group is also developing Vray for Unreal. Lots of big things are on the way.

[Francisco Penaloza]

We've been beta testing Datasmith with Unreal and its pretty much a one click solution. Chaos Group is also developing Vray for Unreal. Lots of big things are on the way.

 

I don't know man, I think Data Smith can become something great, but as for now is not a one-click solution, it really help transferring pre-made information from 3D Max and other software in to Unreal but there is a lot of work that has to be done inside Unreal that will not fit all workflows.

You could say the same of the already dead Stingray. Actually, workflow with 3D Max is more expedite and flexible than Data Smith, but since is Autodesk, there is not much hope for the future and Quality wise is not the same than Unreal.

[Devin Johnston]

It's only a one click solution for exporting and importing, everything else is manual.

[Scott Schroeder]

For me, if it takes 5 hours to do your materials and lights in Max/Vray it'll take you 4 hours in Lumion if you do it all. However, there is the mantra that in Lumion the only things that really matter if you are in a crunch are glass, grass, and water.

 

I think Lumion has it's niche in animations for our office. For stills, it's just not worth the effort in cleaning up our usual crappy Revit imports. Since Lumion combines by material, you want your scene to be fairly clean and organized. The nice thing about Max/Vray is you can push really crappy geometry through with your foot, such as forcing 2-sided to get around the flipped normal issues from SketchUp. Lumion, those types of issues need to be dealt with in a more head on manner and that means more model prep time.

 

Datasmith is going to be a game changer, but right now it's still in the infancy and has a use in smaller residential projects. On the large scale I can tell you that a 19,000 seat NBA arena makes Datasmith crash so hard that it time travels back to Quake Engine.

[beestee]

We use Lumion, Enscape and Corona. We have retired VRay and Mental Ray. Most of our models start in Revit now, a few from SketchUp once in a while, barely open Max more than a few times a year...but when you need extreme lighting accuracy the GPU "game" engines just don't do as well. The only reason we use Corona instead of VRay now is simply the annual cost vs how much it gets used.

 

Get them to upgrade Lumion to the latest version if they haven't, it is a tremendous update for the render quality and would likely make you miss VRay a little less.

[Devin Johnston]

Scott,

What do you think of the animation image quality of Lumion 8? For exteriors I can't see much difference between it and Unreal.

[Scott Schroeder]

Scott,

What do you think of the animation image quality of Lumion 8? For exteriors I can't see much difference between it and Unreal.

 

They have made leaps and bounds with Lumion 8. They key with Lumion is how much extra time are you willing to devote to get it to that level of quality? The out of the box Lumion 8 stuff is good, but to get to the level of quality in some of the demos is an added time investment.

[Eliot Blenkarne]

Also, Lumion 8 isn't exactly real-time - you don't navigate the scene at the final render quality, so it's no good for real-time walkthroughs like UE4/Unity can be. Scenes are still rendered "per frame", just extremely quickly.

[Ernest Burden III]

Since Lumion combines by material, you want your scene to be fairly clean and organized. The nice thing about Max/Vray is you can push really crappy geometry through with your foot, such as forcing 2-sided to get around the flipped normal issues from SketchUp. Lumion, those types of issues need to be dealt with in a more head on manner and that means more model prep time..

 

Ah, like the good old days of Lightscape. It seems groundbreaking = backbreaking.

 

I would love to drop by your office and see what you're up to. Your posts are always interesting and informative, so thank you. Not that I'll be in Denver anytime soon.

[beestee]

Also, Lumion 8 isn't exactly real-time - you don't navigate the scene at the final render quality, so it's no good for real-time walkthroughs like UE4/Unity can be. Scenes are still rendered "per frame", just extremely quickly.

 

Lumion supports pre-baked lightmaps...but it requires a lot of setup:

 

Unity/Lightmapper or Unreal/Lightmass still require set-up and baking before doing a walkthrough, but the process is more integrated with them. Light baking is not standard practice for Lumion since it also requires another render engine to produce the baked light maps and UVs.

 

Enscape, however, does have true realtime lighting. The quality isn't the best, but it is surprisingly decent. Worth taking a look at the demo if you haven't. It also does a pretty good job with VR without any extra setup if you have the hardware to use it.

[Eliot Blenkarne]

Lumion supports pre-baked lightmaps...but it requires a lot of setup:

 

Unity/Lightmapper or Unreal/Lightmass still require set-up and baking before doing a walkthrough, but the process is more integrated with them. Light baking is not standard practice for Lumion since it also requires another render engine to produce the baked light maps and UVs.

 

Enscape, however, does have true realtime lighting. The quality isn't the best, but it is surprisingly decent. Worth taking a look at the demo if you haven't. It also does a pretty good job with VR without any extra setup if you have the hardware to use it.

 

Yip, Have used UE4 on a billion dollar skyscraper project (pre Datasmith - painful to say the least), but the quality is extremely high and the experience smooth. Hard to justify the laborious process as it stands, even with Datasmith

 

We use Enscape a lot, it's not really that practical for VR usage for complex models, unless you turn the quality down - even on our dual xeon, 1080TI equipped machines. But for 360s, basic walkthroughs and stills, it's remarkably useful and insanely quick

[komyali]

Yip, Have used UE4 on a billion dollar skyscraper project (pre Datasmith - painful to say the least), but the quality is extremely high and the experience smooth. Hard to justify the laborious process as it stands, even with Datasmith

 

We use Enscape a lot, it's not really that practical for VR usage for complex models, unless you turn the quality down - even on our dual xeon, 1080TI equipped machines. But for 360s, basic walkthroughs and stills, it's remarkably useful and insanely quick

Give us link or it didnt happen

[Eliot Blenkarne]

Give us link or it didnt happen

 

Not really a shareable sort of project I'm afraid. Took me 8 weeks of 18 hour days to make it happen though!

[komyali]

picture or it didnt happen :D

[Eliot Blenkarne]

I work for a large architecture firm in the South Pacific. AFAIK we're the only firm in our country using UE4 at this level.

 

We're working with our marketing team on our own website, will post something when that's up.