Topic: General questions

[oh.stv]

Hello,

my Company intends to buy the Lumion 3D Pro version. But first i have to ask a couble of questions, what you can do in Lumion and what not.


In general we want to offer our customers a realtime walkthrough, through a custom made 3d model. Like a unbuild building.
Now i already know that Lumion doent support walkthroughs and collision etc. but is it possilbe ,as work around,  to make a camerapath the customer cannot leave but look around?
Or are there any plugins to do so?

 
Further i would like to know:

Stereoscopy:

I already know that Lumion supports that. I red it renders steroscopic images side by side. Now my question is, if its possible to view stereoscopic images in realtime? Or does lumion have to render it befor you can see it.


Lumion 3:

If im right, we could make a custiom 3d model, send it to our customer and he could watch it with Lumion Free right? Now Lumion 3 isnt free yet so we have to give him our installation (without licence) and he can view the file. But is it possible to save it for Lumion 2.5? Or when do u expect the v3 becoming free?
This feature is the only reason for u to buy the pro version ... or do we have other benefits (regading our intentions).


Materials:

Would it be possible to give a customer a custom made Lumion 3d installation, where particular library files are removed?
We would like to offer the possiblility to let the customer choose a certain Material and dont have to choose from hunders of textures.
This also means to bake the texture mapping onto the geometry, so he doesnt have to change the texture scale everytime.

Lights:

I already red its not possible, but that was last year, so i just ask again. Is it possilbe to add own IES lights to Lumion 3?


And last question:

Im just curious. When u startup Lumion u can see a "quest 3D" logo. Now on their hp it looks almost like almost the same product you guys have.
So what is the differents between lumion 3d and quest 3d?


So thats alot of questions, sorry if some of them are already answerd elsewhere (i tried my best to find answers).

Thanks in advance.

STV

[Morten]

That's a lot of questions, STV - I will answer them as soon as possible.

[Morten]

In general we want to offer our customers a realtime walkthrough, through a custom made 3d model. Now i already know that Lumion doent support walkthroughs and collision etc. but is it possilbe ,as work around,  to make a camerapath the customer cannot leave but look around?

This is currently not possible (but it has been requested by other customers).

If im right, we could make a custiom 3d model, send it to our customer and he could watch it with Lumion Free right? Now Lumion 3 isnt free yet so we have to give him our installation (without licence) and he can view the file. But is it possible to save it for Lumion 2.5? Or when do u expect the v3 becoming free?

LUMION FREE 3
I have had a chat with Ferry (the main developer of Lumion) and he tells me that the current plan - which might still change of course - is to release Lumion Free 3 as a small program with only a few models and materials included.

Lumion Free 3 will not be able to load scene files from Lumion 3 or Lumion Pro 3. In addition, it will not be possible to load scenes saved in Lumion Free 3 in other versions of Lumion, so Lumion Free 3 will only be for evaluation/non-commercial purposes.

Lumion Free 3 will also not be able to load the self-contained scene files (LS3) from Lumion Pro 3.

HOW TO ALLOW YOUR CLIENT TO INSPECT SCENES
If you want to allow clients to inspect your scenes in real-time 3D (instead of sending them a rendered video), you will need Lumion Pro 3 as this is the only version which lets you export LS3 files.

Clients will then be able to load the LS3 file in an upcoming dedicated new (free) LS3 viewer application. It will not be possible to edit the scene in this viewer application.

Alternatively, if you can only afford Lumion 3 (standard), your client would also need to buy Lumion 3 (standard) in order to load your scene and library files.

DISCLAIMER: Bear in mind that Lumion Free 3 and the dedicated LS3 scene viewer application have not yet been released, so I can't guarantee that everything will work as described above.

Now my question is, if its possible to view stereoscopic images in realtime? Or does lumion have to render it befor you can see it.

The side-by-side stereoscopic renderings have to be rendered as images or as an MP4 video which would require a suitable 3D device to enable you to view it. You'll have to look up which devices/TVs/monitors support stereoscopic side-by-side 3D on Google.

Alternatively, you can use Nvidia 3D Vision to view your scene, e.g. in Theatre mode, with the Nvidia shutter glasses but bear in mind that this functionality is currently not working in Lumion 2.5 and Lumion 3.x. I hope the developers will be able to fix it in a future update.

This feature is the only reason for u to buy the pro version ... or do we have other benefits (regading our intentions).

Apart from LS3 export, Lumion Pro allows you to include 3D sounds in your scenes and you can also add 2D sounds to your videos. In addition, the built-in Model Library is much bigger in Lumion Pro than in Lumion (709 vs 2078 models). There's more information here:
http://lumion3d.com/specs/

Would it be possible to give a customer a custom made Lumion 3d installation, where particular library files are removed?

No, this is not possible. It is also not possible to save the built-in materials with custom scales.

I already red its not possible, but that was last year, so i just ask again. Is it possilbe to add own IES lights to Lumion 3?

No, this is not possible.

Im just curious. When u startup Lumion u can see a "quest 3D" logo. Now on their hp it looks almost like almost the same product you guys have.
So what is the differents between lumion 3d and quest 3d?

Lumion is architectural visualisation software made with Quest3D. It is easy to use and does not require any 3D graphics skills or programming skills.

Quest3D is software that allows you to make 3D applications using a unique visual programming language. You can make anything from 3D simulations to custom-made architectural visualisations.

Act-3D is the company behind both Lumion and Quest3D.

[oh.stv]

Thank u very much for your answers. Now i have to discuss the issue with my team.

Just one thing:

I dont realy understand the real purpose of the Lumion. Apperantly the focus (like u mentioned in another thread) is to make videos of exterior visualisation right?
So why do u guys put so much effort in this whole realtime thing, if u dont gain any adavantage out of it?
I see it is nice to have this "what you see is what u get" feeling while making a scene. But its not realy necessary to do so ....
Wouldnt it make more sense to make a lumion like UI but the renderd result is made by vray, mental ray or any other high quality render engine?

IMHO the one and only real point of ur software would be "realtime walkthroughs" like with SDK or UDK but manageable without putting weeks of work in a simple scene.   

Just some thoughts. Thanks anyway for your help.

Greets

STV

[Morten]

Thanks for taking the time to send us your feedback, STV.

One of the main ideas behind Lumion is that you might sacrifice quality compared to V-Ray etc but in return, you gain speed due to the fact that scenes are prepared and rendered with the graphics card, i.e. the GPU instead of the CPU. So instead of waiting for several minutes or hours for each frame to finish rendering in V-Ray, you only wait a few seconds.

Also, the user interface is hopefully easier to use than V-Ray + 3DS Max and other 3rd party render engines, and we include large Model, Material and Sound Libraries which you'd otherwise be paying a fair amount of money for if you were to buy your entourage models from say, EverMotion.

Add to that a movie editor with effects and you have an easy-to-use tool for quickly creating architectural visualisations - that's the idea anyway but we're obviously constantly working on improving Lumion, so feedback is always welcome