Topic: Lumion Manual?

[marvins_dad]

Alright - got my license, now really looking to get the most out of this product.

Already doing a bit of this...

I looked through the forums and searched.  The only documentation I can find is the "Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts" printout.

1 - Manual...is there anything other than the Tips and Tricks and the Importing out there for tutorials or written instructions?

2 - Animating objects - after searching a few threads I can't find an explanation for animating objects other than move-animate...but I can't find where that would be located.  Within the movie key framing, there is no option to select objects.

Thanks

[Brian Hengelsberg]

There is no manual as of yet, although some people have been talking about making their own.  For moving objects:

1.) Make a camera path in movie mode.
2.) After the path is made, click on the stars button at the top right of the screen.
3.)  You will see three categories of effects in the center of the screen, choose the middle or "Scene Effects"
4.) Select the button that is "Move Items", you will be taken back to the move mode with a button on the right with a black bar in it.
5.) To move items or animate objects, select the black bar.  It will open what looks like build mode with two arrows at the bottom of the screen one that says "start Frame" and the other on the right has not title.
6.) Click the left arrow for start frame, and then hover your mouse over the object you would like to move.  When you do you will see  move and rotate buttons.
7.) Select the move and move the object to the start point.
8.) Repeat the process by selecting the right arrow and moving the object to the end of its path.
9.)  Thats it, if you shorten the path distance, the movement will be slower, of you lengthen it the object will move much faster.

Things to keep in mind are all objects can only move in a straight path.  Any object imported can be moved/ rotated, but you can not gab a door out of an entire model to rotate, it would need to be separate.

Let me know if this works for you or if you run into any issues and i will see if i can help out.

[Brian Hengelsberg]

Frank created a movie that explains the process in this location 2 http://lumion3d.com/forum/index.php?topic=1055.0

[marvins_dad]

Thanks Brian - I will try this out.

[marvins_dad]

One other question that I meant to ask...

3.  Where do the Lumion files reside?  I don't see them in the same folder as the dae exported file that I imported.

Thanks

[Brian Hengelsberg]

My Documents\Lumion\

You must copy information from the "Library" directory (all 4 files) and "Scenes" (2 files) if you are going to put it onto another computer.  Currently there is no way to save them to your own directory.

[marvins_dad]

Wow - that stinks.
We keep all our files on a server and it would be good to be able to save under the project we are working on for later use and for someone else to follow behind to do work from another machine.

Hopefully this is something they are working on for later releases.

[Brian Hengelsberg]

Am in the same boat...been backing up the information to the server through an active copy, but can be a real pain when working in a server environment for sharing.  I guess for archiving purposes you could take the files in the folders and place them in a directory, would just have to move them to a computer if you wish to work on them again. 

[marvins_dad]

There is no manual as of yet, although some people have been talking about making their own.  For moving objects:

1.) Make a camera path in movie mode.
2.) After the path is made, click on the stars button at the top right of the screen.
3.)  You will see three categories of effects in the center of the screen, choose the middle or "Scene Effects"
4.) Select the button that is "Move Items", you will be taken back to the move mode with a button on the right with a black bar in it.
5.) To move items or animate objects, select the black bar.  It will open what looks like build mode with two arrows at the bottom of the screen one that says "start Frame" and the other on the right has not title.
6.) Click the left arrow for start frame, and then hover your mouse over the object you would like to move.  When you do you will see  move and rotate buttons.
7.) Select the move and move the object to the start point.
8.) Repeat the process by selecting the right arrow and moving the object to the end of its path.
9.)  Thats it, if you shorten the path distance, the movement will be slower, of you lengthen it the object will move much faster.

Things to keep in mind are all objects can only move in a straight path.  Any object imported can be moved/ rotated, but you can not gab a door out of an entire model to rotate, it would need to be separate.

Let me know if this works for you or if you run into any issues and i will see if i can help out.

Yes this worked!  I doubt I would have ever figured out that without a writeup.

[Brian Hengelsberg]

Give yourself a little more credit..i give you a week and you will have mastered most of the software...we all have little tricks, that will come in time 

[Remko]

Give yourself a little more credit..i give you a week and you will have mastered most of the software...we all have little tricks, that will come in time 

Our experience with manuals in the past was horrible to be honest. The problem is that we are unable to update the manual quickly enough when the software gets updated quickly. We intend to create multiple language versions of Lumion in the future so this makes the problem even worse. There are two things could do. We could have very slow updates, like once a year, or we could find another solution.

The solution we chose is this: We have designed the program in such a way you don't need a manual. Most things are intuitive and you can figure them out by yourself. Another thing is the built-in help when you hover over the help icon. They show you what to do. The third thing is the video tutorials. They really help to get you started.

There are a few things that are hard to figure out (hotkeys etc.) and it might be a good idea to put those in a web page so you have a quick list of all the things you can do.

Most things are listed in the forum so when you are looking for something it usually helps to search the forum.

By the way, we had some plans to make an "Package" option for Lumion so you could easily transfer and backup your project. Essentially it just grabs all the data you need for a certain project and packs it in a special zip file. When you double click the file it gets loaded into Lumion and added to your current projects. This is a great way to take a project from one computer to another.

We had some other requests from other users to be able to change your "home" folder for your projects. Sounds like a reasonable idea.

[Gga_Mars]

Hi there !
Agree with you ... I prefer you spend your time and money in other thing than in a multiple language manual which is for me completely useless but this is only my opinion... "did someone read once the manual of his iphone ?" lol

[marvins_dad]

Thanks for the response.  Maybe if there was a little more Help available for sub-features other than just a hover over - like the animation of objects...would have never figured that out without the forum...not as intuitive...once I was given a little instructions it seems to be an easy function.

Forums are always good, but for some reason I haven't been too successful with searching these.  Not sure if it the forum software or what.  I am an admin and moderator and member of tons of forums, so I really like that they are available, but searching these has been torture.   Not sure if it is because it looks as if you changed the location of the forum at one point so there are a lot of dead links or what it is...or even if the search feature isn't doing boolean searches properly.

Simple things like "how do I reload a model" - once I found it it made a little bit of sense, but it really was impossible to find on the forums...and without a formal help I don't know if I would have found it without feeling like a noob and posting the question in General section.

More Tutorials!!!  The ones you have are great!  Keep them up.

thanks

antoine

Our experience with manuals in the past was horrible to be honest. The problem is that we are unable to update the manual quickly enough when the software gets updated quickly. We intend to create multiple language versions of Lumion in the future so this makes the problem even worse. There are two things could do. We could have very slow updates, like once a year, or we could find another solution.

The solution we chose is this: We have designed the program in such a way you don't need a manual. Most things are intuitive and you can figure them out by yourself. Another thing is the built-in help when you hover over the help icon. They show you what to do. The third thing is the video tutorials. They really help to get you started.

There are a few things that are hard to figure out (hotkeys etc.) and it might be a good idea to put those in a web page so you have a quick list of all the things you can do.

Most things are listed in the forum so when you are looking for something it usually helps to search the forum.

By the way, we had some plans to make an "Package" option for Lumion so you could easily transfer and backup your project. Essentially it just grabs all the data you need for a certain project and packs it in a special zip file. When you double click the file it gets loaded into Lumion and added to your current projects. This is a great way to take a project from one computer to another.

We had some other requests from other users to be able to change your "home" folder for your projects. Sounds like a reasonable idea.

[Ferry]

We might add a one page manual to the interface to get started on the rest of the information that we already provide.

[marvins_dad]

Even if that ended up with the FAQ - Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts...that would be good...for the more advanced or hidden features like reloading a model that was imported and animation (though a tutorial video would best express this feature)