Topic: Export to Unity 3D

[Alain]

Hi all

I'm working in a firm that produces architecture vizualisation for marketing.
Lumion seems to be great, but one thing I very miss is the possibility to play lumion-scenes within a webbowser like you can do with Unity 3D.

This would be a huge impovement if you put scenes on a marketing website and just explore the scenes within the webbrowser, without downloading any plugins, without downloading a seperate scene file before, without any special hardware, just realtime without pain.

If this would be possible we would have a very short workflow (at payable costs for customers) producing those kind a 3d scenes, without boring remapping, coding, optimising scenes like you have to do if you export your scenes directly to Unity 3D.

So my questions are:
-Is it possible to play lumion scenes within a webbrowser ?
-If no, is it possible to export scene to Unity 3D ?
-If no, would you write a Plugin for all webbrowsers (you would have to use streaming servers that endusers NOT must have special graphiccards) ?

Kind regards
Alain

[RAD]

Don't take my word for this but,
to answer your first question.

No you can't play Lumion scenes within a web-browser. (at this time - don't think the Lumion team is focused on this at this moment as there are bigger issues tackle first)

You can't export any scenes out of Lumion at this time.  They are working on an exe. or something of the like for viewing Lumion scenes outside of the software itself.  I imagine it will be pretty locked down in options however.

You would like a plug-in that plays real-time scenes in Lumion that may be in advance of 3, 4, or 5 billion polygons for all web-browers and the ability to stream these models in "real-time" that may well be in advance of 2, 3 or 4 gigs in size without someone having to have a special graphics card...... -that is a lot to ask.  Nobody is doing that anywhere in the world- probably for a reason.

If you want Unity - Unity is best for Unity.

Course you could also check out Lumion's DNA mother Quest3D.  You might find exactly what you are looking for with that software.

Cheers

[peterm]

Is it possible to play lumion scenes within a webbrowser.

CRhoades has more directly answered, so just a few thoughts as I see things.

Well, yes it is, but not the way you are considering as realtime.  Exporting images and video in a common format allows any user to 'play' a scene on any platform/browser, its just that the scene is predetermined by the vizualiser using Lumion as to what they want the 'end-user' to see.  Chances are that may be fine for 95% of web visitor type users.

The ability to provide real-time arch viz is not a small matter.  The real key is not the technology, but the end-user, their platforms (generally read that as lack of suitable hardware), and their actual bahaviour mode to actually 'explore' scenes. 

It's also a time thing, how many people are going to spend potentially much longer in a real-time app exploring the arch viz as compared to being (well) directed about the salient points of the property?  That is, if someone is viewing on the web, its more likely they are in there for a 5 minute quick look, give me the overview.  Getting them to change behaviour from passive to active explorer has just (so far) not proven to be the case.  Perhaps as time goes by that may change.

Certainly there are plenty of good reasons to provide real-time, but in this time-limited world, if you ask someone to spend 15 minutes exploring as compared to 5 minutes viewing well structured presentation video of the same arch viz, then I would guess most would opt for the video.

Perhaps as an additional service those that want to then go into more detail (perhaps offline) via exploring could then be given the chioce to select an interactive real-time view.  But in doing so, that means the provider of the arch viz then needs to spend time producing 2 things for the same communication, ie can be cost exclusive to the process.  Sort of like producing 5 different types of drawings and renderings of the same face of the building just to impart slightly different look and feel about it, nice but who has the time.

As a real-time developer myself I would love to see such things possible, and it will happen as all the technology progresses, but many have tried over the last 10-15 years.  Web enabled has not proven successful, distributing something (a scene file to play) over the web can be, so in lots of cases its been used more for direct presentation, one-to-one and specialised provision to clients/end-users.

I'm not saying that its not possible, or some form is not possible in future.  One way things might go is to base content that uses the new Flash API as the rendering level platform, thus making it widely available and web enabled.  UnReal have just recently demo'd their engine running a real-time game in Flash, and Unity are in process of porting as well I gather, so its potentially possible, just not anytime soon.

Another technology some are trying to use is server rendered and streamed images that look like interactive real-time to the end-user, but that requires lots of servers, clouds, and most importantly users with extreme high bandwidth at their doorstep, fine in some parts of the world but not the majority.

[mischa]

Don't take my word for this but,
to answer your first question.

No you can't play Lumion scenes within a web-browser. (at this time - don't think the Lumion team is focused on this at this moment as there are bigger issues tackle first)

You can't export any scenes out of Lumion at this time.  They are working on an exe. or something of the like for viewing Lumion scenes outside of the software itself.  I imagine it will be pretty locked down in options however.

You would like a plug-in that plays real-time scenes in Lumion that may be in advance of 3, 4, or 5 billion polygons for all web-browers and the ability to stream these models in "real-time" that may well be in advance of 2, 3 or 4 gigs in size without someone having to have a special graphics card...... -that is a lot to ask.  Nobody is doing that anywhere in the world- probably for a reason.

If you want Unity - Unity is best for Unity.

Course you could also check out Lumion's DNA mother Quest3D.  You might find exactly what you are looking for with that software.

Cheers

If I am not wrong, the Lumion team quit the idea of making it possible to produce an exe.  Instead they were thinking about different possiblities for making it possible to view the scene no matter on which platform system in a web browser, like for example possible with QTVR (several 360 degree images linked together).

[Gaieus]

As far as I remember (and all my info is collected from the forums here), a standalone walkthrough application is still planned for Lumion. Now if it is going to be an "exe" or other solution, can be a question of eventual development (it would be nice to be able to run it on Macs, too though).

I read somewhere however that they are not planning to make this walkthrough available on web browsers (which - at the current stage of web browsers - would definitely need a plugin but so does Unity). It would be cool of course (and I would also like the possibility).

360 degree panoramas is a different thing. They can also be very cool and interactive (and indeed I also hope that they will be implemented) but the interactivity is rather different.

Exporting is also impossible (now).

I think there is more than technical development (or the lack or rather current stage of it) but also licensing the different "moduiles" Lumion is made up of (like Speed Tree and such).

Then of course, you never know and at a stage anything can change.

[Alain]

Ok, thank you guys.

In my opinion the only usefull (easy to use for average endusers) solution considering all the webtechnics we have today is to compute realtime serverside by using rigs of GPU-prozessors.

The enduser can walk throug a building in realtime with the webbrowser of it's Laptop, smartphone or whatever. He doesn't need specific hardware because the server computes the frames he needs.
The todays internet is fast enough to deliever a high enough framerate for this. It's like watching television on the internet but you can interactive it.

Quicktime VR's (panoramas) are a very old technic, I guess this possibility we have since about 20 years now and we definitily have new possibilities today, we just have to use it.

Lumion should at least code a plugin for an webbrowser using a serverside streaming solution (like Unity does).

This would be a very huge step for marketing of real estate !

I very hope Lumion will think about it and realize it

Kind regards
Alain

[Gaieus]

Well, I would certainly love to see this happen, too. Hopefully we'll get there one day with Lumion (too).

[nizo]

did you find a solution? im exactly at the same stage. i can pay you for a solution. i've been struggling for 3 days

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