Chapter 1. Getting Ready with Lumion 3D
What was your initial reaction when you discovered Lumion 3D and what you can do with it? Perhaps, it was an absolute astonishment since Lumion 3D is a remarkable software and at the same time, it is easy to use. Personally, I have been using Lumion since its first version and with each new version, Lumion's team doesn't stop surprising me with new tools and the ability to almost effortlessly produce artistic impressions, believable renders, and incredible videos in a very reasonable amount of time.
However, Lumion 3D has some limitations and is not a magical solution that will automatically create beautiful concepts and illustrations. Some will say that it takes only 15 minutes to make a a final product from a 3D model (not including the render time), but the truth is that if you want to create a professional output, there is the need for more time and attention to detail. One way you can optimize the time it takes to go from point A to point B is by improving your workflow and trying some techniques that are used in real projects and that can be easily included in your standard workflow.
This first chapter is designed to cover the most important topics and gives you a solid foundation that will help you start working with Lumion. We will cover the following topics in this chapter:
- What it is possible to do with Lumion
- Where to get a demo version
- What do you need to work with Lumion
- Different Lumion versions
- Using additional models
- Keeping the project organized
- Using Lumion's layers
- The importance of materials
- Quick overview
The first few topics are aimed for those who are new to Lumion or don't know whether Lumion can meet their needs. For them, this initial section will work as an introduction. So, if you have some experience working with Lumion, feel free to jump to the section that most fits your need and before you skip this initial chapter, you may want to explore the last section called Quick overview of Lumion to check out the new interface and shortcuts in Lumion.
An introduction to Lumion for beginners
Lumion is targeted to produce visualizations and in most commercial projects this implies the use of a great deal of vegetation, a vast diversity of 3D models, a lighting system and materials, just to mention a few of the key aspects. Now, imagine having all of this information in real time. if you were to build a tree, not only will you see the materials, light, and shadows, but you can also move the camera around and see in real time how the tree looks like. As a plus, everything in Lumion is intuitive and user-friendly.
What is possible with Lumion
This creative independence and usability doesn't come without a fee because in order to provide this continuous feedback (real time), some corners need to be cut. This in turn affects how light is calculated and how materials are designed and react to light. Also, you need to keep a careful balance between 3D details and the amount of geometry used, as it is obligatory.
Note
Lumion is not an application for producing photo-realistic renders. However, the simplicity and time it takes to have a final product ready to show to the client compensates for this lack of photo-realistic touch. You can see this for yourself at http://lumion3d.com/faq/#hardware.
What is necessary to work with Lumion
An additional aspect you need to know is that Lumion wasn't designed with modeling and texturing in mind. Therefore, it is your responsibility to have a detailed 3D model and extra models if you don't like Lumion's optimized models. This means that all the modeling and texturing work needs to be done using an external software. If you are looking for something free, SketchUp is the best solution. Although, you can use Blender, which is a more complex and complete solution.
What about other applications? Well, you need to export the 3D models into a format that Lumion can read and import. To give you an idea of what Lumion supports, have a look at the following list:
- Autodesk RealDWG:
*.dxf - Autodesk RealDWG:
*.dwg - COLLADA:
*.dae - FBX:
*.fbx - 3ds Max:
*.max - 3ds:
*.3ds - Obj:
*.obj - SketchUp:
*.skp - KMZ:
*kmz
Don't panic if you don't see your favorite application listed here, because it doesn't mean that Lumion is out of question. Most 3D applications can export the 3D model using the FBX or COLLADA file format. For example, I often use Revit for some projects and Lumion's team was kind enough to provide a free export for all users not only for Revit, but also for ArchiCAD.
As was mentioned before, some of these models will need to be cleaned and optimized in order to have a balance between detail and geometry. How can we do this you ask? One way is to manually clean the geometry, which can be very tedious and time-consuming. On the other hand, you could use Simplygon. They have a free version that will give you enough room to start cleaning geometry.
After this quick introduction to what is involved in working with Lumion, we can start and prepare ourselves to launch Lumion. However, the preparation starts before we even launch Lumion. How?
Keep your project organized!
From the CAD plans to the final image or animation clip, there is a lot of information that needs to be stored in an orderly way. You may prefer to work in a chaotic way, but it pays to be organized when using Lumion because similar to most applications, it uses links to files in order to work.
Lumion is not like 3ds Max or Maya where when you create a project, it automatically creates the list of folders to keep everything organized. This means that you will need to create some of these folders and keep the files inside those folders; otherwise, you could face some problems down the line. What would I recommend, you ask? Have a look at how the folders are organized in the following figure:
Make a good habit and practice in the way you use layers throughout the project. This not only makes your project more organized, but will also dramatically improve the speed of Lumion's viewport. How does it work? Well, every 3D model added to the scene means that Lumion needs to render that information in real time and that will decrease the speed of Lumion's viewport, which is measured in frames per second. The more frames per second (FPS) the more fluid working in Lumion will be, and you can see that information at the top-right corner of Lumion's interface.
So, how can the layers help us with this? During the process of building the 3D world in Lumion, we don't need to have all the 3D models on screen and in some situations, it is even better if we don't have them exposed. By using the layers to hide these 3D models, we not only reduce some visual noise, but we hide geometry, and hiding geometry means that Lumion has more resources available, which in turn makes the viewport much smoother.
One last thing that you need to understand before we start working with Lumion is why we need to use different materials on your models.
The importance of materials
This is something fundamental that needs to be done in order to work with Lumion. In simple terms, Lumion does not recognize your geometry, but instead recognizes the materials assigned to each surface or face. To help you understand, let's have a look at the following image:
In this case, a simple colored material was applied to the different sections. For example, for the windows, we used a blue material; for the walls, a green material; and so on.
With all of these things in mind, you are now ready for a quick overview of Lumion and are ready to find out how it works. It is a crash course in two pages, but it will provide you with all you need to know to follow the rest of the book.
A quick overview of Lumion
As mentioned before, when you launch Lumion for the very first time, a benchmark starts to evaluate your workstation. After that comes the Files menu that is composed of five tabs—New, Examples, Load scene, Save scene (this tab only appears after you open a scene), and Import full scene.
The New tab is where you start a new project and here you can find nine different scenes to help you start working with Lumion. Keep in mind that the difference between each scene is the settings used for landscaping, weather, and lighting, which means that you can pick any scene available and then create the other eight scenes easily. Let's click on the White scene to start working with Lumion and explore the interface to see where we can find the main menus.
Exploring the interface and controlling the camera
Lumion tries to provide you with a friendly user interface and, initially, this may be confusing because you almost have no visual information and don't know where to find the menus. Lumion has four main menus that you can find on the left-hand side of the screen and when Lumion opens a new scene, the Import menu is the one that is opened by default. The other three menus only appear when you move the mouse close to the Import menu icon that you see on the screen. The following image shows you the toolbars that appear when you open each menu:
This information is available when you work with Lumion; you just need to hover your mouse over the Help button and all of these tips will appear. However, there are some shortcuts you can use to control the camera, which are as follows:
- Double-click with the right mouse button to zoom in
- Use the middle mouse button and move the mouse to pan the camera
- Scroll the wheel mouse up/down to zoom in and out of the camera
- Ctrl + H is used to reset the camera pitch to a horizontal viewpoint
- O + the right mouse button is used to orbit the camera
All of these shortcuts and keys that are used to control the viewport while working in Lumion will be used later to control and tweak the cameras used for the animation clip and to render images.
This first chapter was quick but essential introduction to Lumion. You saw what it is that we can do with Lumion regarding quality and also saw the complexity of the scenes you can create by adding literally millions of geometrical shapes. You learned that although a Lumion standard version doesn't provide the myriad of 3D models than Lumion Pro has, there are many places where you can find good quality models that will need some geometry cleaning, which don't compromise Lumion's speed.
The final section of the chapter was dedicated to the topic of how to start working with Lumion, starting with the right foot forward by keeping the project organized using Lumion's layers, and finally, we identified the need to use different materials when modeling. Now, after the crash course on how to start working with Lumion, you are ready for the next chapter.
The next chapter will help you with the next stage of the workflow: importing and controlling models. This may look straightforward, but can present some challenges that require the best practices to keep a smooth workflow.
This book is designed for advanced Lumion users who wish to apply these techniques to their own projects. The reader should be familiar with modeling knowledge and have at least a basic knowledge of a graphics editing program, such as Photoshop or Gimp.
This book is designed for advanced Lumion users who wish to apply these techniques to their own projects. The reader should be familiar with modeling knowledge and have at least a basic knowledge of a graphics editing program, such as Photoshop or Gimp.
Publication date :
Jun 30, 2015
Length:
166 pages
Edition :
1st
Language :
English
ISBN-13 :
9781783550869
Publication date :
Jun 30, 2015
Length:
166 pages
Edition :
1st
Language :
English
ISBN-13 :
9781783550869
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Ciro Cardoso is an experienced 3D artist and a trained author with an architectural background who started experimenting with creative software and 3D software back in 2000. In 2005, he was running his own small multimedia business and worked on projects as diverse as graphic designing, CAD services, and architectural visualization; more recently, he started using Lumion successfully for high-end projects in more than six countries. He is quite literate with software in general, with extensive expertise with Maya, 3ds Max, AutoCAD, Photoshop, Lumion, Unreal 4, and Bentley MicroStation. He is also the author of several books about Lumion and is now working in London.
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