Lumion
Data
- homepage: Lumion
- current release: Lumion/Lumion Pro 9.3 from March 2019
Type
- standalone render and 3d application, reads obj and fbx
Info
Lumion is targeted at architectural realtime visualisation. The demo movies have a quite impressive quality. The application comes with a lot of content like trees, billboard people, cars, landscape buildings etc. In their interface they allow to populate a scene with simple drag and drop proceduers. Have a look at the demo videos, its quite fun.
Lumion now offers a limited free version, for this reason this renderer will appear in the free section too. Of course there are some limitations in this release, and to be honest, it seems that these limitations are serious. Watermarks, material limitations, object limitations etc. Thats a lot limitations. But it may good enough to decide if the program is appropriate for your needs or not.
Since June 2012 the company offers a free student version which removes most of the serious limitations of the free version, but it is limited to educational institutes and there is a educational version for a reduces price. But both are watermarked.
Since version 6 the company created fancy names for their technologies like PureGlass, Hyperlight 2 which is much better that Hyperlight, Speedray reflections, Omnishadow (ambient occulusion).
Release 9.3:
As much as I can see, the mainly improved the workflow between VectorWorks and Lumion.
Release 9:
Poliigons Real Skies are now available in Lumion as well as a sun and sky implementatino to create fast and realistic lighings. Rain and snow effects can be used for appealing athmosphere. Fur and grass materials are avialable.
Release 7:
Only 5 months after the last release Lumion updates to version 7. They introduce some nice features like area lights and light stips, translucency for materials whereas the images look more like subsurface scattering. You can add weathering to your materials to make them look aged. Now it is easy to cover geometry with foliage like ivy. Some workflows have been improved.
Release 6.3 and 6.5:
Workflow updates, transparency can be applied to trees to avoid them to cover important objects. It is now possible to render for Oculus Rift and GearVR to create virtual environments.
Release 3.0:
With version 3.0 the global illumination has been improved as well as reflections and the model library.
Release 2.5:
Act-3D ships a pro version of Lumion now. With the pro version, you have access to a huge amount of models from the library and you can output images in quite high resolutions.
Release 2.0:
They have a lot of improvements like curved camera movements (wow!), the software comes with more predefined content.
Last update: 01.2021