November 04, 2011, 10:40:50 am
I am using FormZ, which is basically Autodessys version of Bonzai with some extra functionality, which I rarely use. The program has been in development since the early 90'ies as far as I know, and appears to be very polished. Working within a feature-set already present in Bonzai I am doing Archviz and set-design. The program is an excellent and very speedy modeler. It imports a lot of formats, notable exception is fbx, and export to Lumion works via 3ds. Lumion does not read Collada-files created in FormZ. Tried with Bonzai, the same. Autodessys states their collada-exporter creates files excatly according to spec, so it seems Lumion is either just working with colladas generated by the likes of Sketchup or Autodessys got it wrong.
Anyway, I recommend giving Bonzai a try. They have a fully functional 1-month demo and currently an open beta of a new FormZ-version as well.
Must sound like a sales-rep, but their customer support is better than any I have seen thus far and their forum is quite lively and helpful. Just as Lumion's.