Topic: Lumion Viewer

[edamaso88]

Is there a way to preview the Lumion Viewer?  We're looking for real time rendering of a model to give to our clients.  We are looking into Unity 3D and Lumion.  I was wondering whether the Lumion Viewer has similar functionality to Unity.  Is there somewhere where we can preview the Lumion Viewer?

Thanks
Eugene

[peterm]

Hi Eugene

Thanks for your interest in Lumion.

The Lumion Viewer is available for clients of Lumion Pro users to view in real-time the content they have prepared for their client.

The Lumion Viewer has the following key features:
1.  It's an end-user runtime only application to play prepared content, you cannot use the Viewer itself to develop or create content.

2. Walk-through mode: where the end-user uses keyboard and mouse to navigate through the scene.

3. Flythrough mode: the pre-made video clips created in Pro, that set the camera views and effects, are played in sequence in real-time.  It is therefore a pre-defined path with no other interaction other than to switch back to walk-through mode.

4. There is no other interaction other than turning some display quality levels on/off.


Unity and Lumion are two very different tool sets, and quite different functionality:
1.  Unity will require design and programming of the GUI/interface and navigation for your clients, among other things to provide a real-time view of the content (alternatively you could look at Quest3D made by the makers of Lumion, Act-3D).  It's also prime market is gaming, but of course can be used for other real-time 3D.  

2.  the Lumion Viewer functionality is all fixed to the above key end-user features.  There's no requirement (or ability in the Viewer, or in Lumion Pro) to programme functionality, it's presentational only.  This means once the content is prepared, its a quick, simple process of creating a special content file that the viewer will play back, nothing else is needed.

[edamaso88]

Thank you for your response.  One other question I have is, is the lumion viewer available to our clients?  Or would they need to purchase their own professional license in order to view the content we authored for them?  Our intent would to author a model for our client to navigate only, and not modify (similar to the way Unity can be viewed via online via by downloading a program).   

Thank you again for your quick response.

[edamaso88]

also is there a way to preview the functionality of the viewer prior to purchase?

[peterm]

... is the lumion viewer available to our clients?  Or would they need to purchase their own professional license in order to view the content we authored for them? ..

When you purchase Lumion Pro, the license also allows you to provide the link to the client to download from the Lumion site and install the Lumion Viewer on their PC.

So it is available to as many clients as you wish to distribute content to.

They do not need to purchase a license, nor do they need any other form of Lumion for the purpose of viewing the LS3 file you have prepared of the content.

The LS3 file is a packaged scene content file for the viewer to play.  It contains all assets or links to Lumion Library assets, the clip animations etc, that make up the Lumion scene.

The Lumion Viewer is a fairly large file as it contains the full Lumion Library of assets.  In this way your content file is smaller to clients, and additional LS3 scenes do not need to duplicate assets already part of the Viewer library.  This is also done for reasons relating to Act-3D's own licenses that contain third party content.

Your client just navigates the scene, or lets the movie animation you have made for the scene play.

I have uploaded (see attached) a quick screen capture (half size for file size, so the quality is not best) of using the Viewer with a Lumion sample scene, first part walk0through, 2nd part flythrough, has lots of effects and DOF etc. 

As mentioned its designed specifically for client use by providing a very simple operation to the navigation or play.  There's not much to the functionality; open the LS3 file or double-click on it to run, navigation keys to move around, up and down etc and Enter key to switch between walk-through and fly-through (movie) modes.

[peterm]

also is there a way to preview the functionality of the viewer prior to purchase?

Possibly the best thing to do would be to contact your local Lumion reseller, or the Lumion sale staff ( email: info [at] act-3d.com, Attention: Patricia) and see what they can arrange.

[CSMcKillip]

The viewer is a stripped down version of what you would expect from the free version. Your Clint's computer needs to meet the requirements to run a full version of lumion. The viewer has to modes, a free for all control and a movie mode.

Movie mode lets the client view your animation that you setup but full screen and a wakthru mode that gives the user the ability to walk or view where they want.

Download the free version and just expect all the settings and adjustments to be removed.

[edamaso88]

Would you say the Lumion Viewer would be equivalent to the theater mode in the free version?

[CSMcKillip]

Would you say the Lumion Viewer would be equivalent to the theater mode in the free version?

In short yes.

[Morten]

(Also, in the standalone Lumion Viewer you can press Return to toggle between fly-through mode and Movie playback mode)

[edamaso88]

(Also, in the standalone Lumion Viewer you can press Return to toggle between fly-through mode and Movie playback mode)

Are there any examples of the viewer that we can navigate?

[peterm]

Sorry, but no (unless you are a client of, or know someone who is a Lumion Pro user).

[SEANL]

Would the LUMION Viewer run well on a Microsoft Surface with the following specs:

4th Gen Intel® Core™ i5
Windows 8.1 Pro
1920 x 1080
USB 3.0
64 GB or 128 GB/4 GB RAM
256 GB or 512 GB/8 GB RAM
(Includes Surface Pro Pen with Palm Block technology)


I appreciate any and all feedback. My colleague at work has one on order, so I'm crossing my fingers he'll be able to show off our scenes.

Thanks.
SEANL

[s133zy]

Also, be warned that lumion does not offer colliders for their real-time visualizations. (Aka invisible walls) So clients viewing the model can get lost pretty easily.

[Morten]

Hi SEANL, sorry to disappoint you but Microsoft Surface ships with an Intel HD graphics card which I'm pretty sure isn't fast/powerful enough for Lumion.

That being said, as far as I know nobody has ever tried to run Lumion on a Microsoft Surface before, so we'd be very interested to hear back from you, once you've received it.