January 26, 2011, 10:51:45 pm
I started to evaluate lumion and have some question.
In general its a nice tool with good stuff for real-time viz. I dislike the UI. Looks blotchy and not very slick like I'm used from other (game)-editors.
Some of the supported buildings are looking like from 1995 too.
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Anyway, overall I like it and have some question before I consider buying it:
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1. I noticed very blocky shadows in the viewport. Like if the shadowmap is 256px or even less. Is this a normal appearance? What rendering is involved in Lumion? Deffered rendering? My clients likes to navigate the project in real-time but with such a low-quality of shadows the showcase effect is not that impressive as in a rendered movie mode. I hope I can turn on all the beauty in a real-time presentation too and not just in a movie-mode.

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2. Can I build my own roads and rivers or just using imported meshes?
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3. I work with large scale terrains in my projects usually. Around 2km x 2km or even 4x4km. Can Lumion handle such a scale with huge amount of vegetation? One of my projects had over 1.2 millions of vegetation assets so this needs to be in it. Whats about vegetation billboarding and LoD meshes in general?
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4. In the context of question 3 I would like to know if Lumion has the possibility to import a satellite image and place it over the whole terrain.
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One suggestion: It really would help to have some technical fact sheets somewhere around the website so professionals can get a first impression.

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Thanks for answering my questions.
