Topic: Questions and settings suggestions - Welcome all comments

[Architectural Innovation]

Thanks in advance for your time if you can take a moment to help!

I am wondering how most people (or staff) tend to adjust their settings differently for scenes that are closer and farther away from the subject matter. Especially shadow settings, which right now are displaying differently in "build mode" than what actually renders. Please feel free to offer any other suggestions as well.

I realize this can be subjective, depending on what is defined as close, and far away, but assume what you can from my attched test render and let me know what your experience has been. My building is looking a bit "flat" at times and the shadow range is hard to adjust to get nice shadows on building at same time as having ANY shadows on distant trees...this makes the trees, etc look terribly flat and lifeless. I believe the Ambient brightness needs adjusted as well. The settings are still rather abstruse and not clearly defined anywhere.

Question #1: (CLOSE UP SHOTS)
I would like closer shots to have very nice, clean ambient and diffuse shadows. What have you used to accomplish this?
- Ambient Shadows?
- Ambient Scale?
- Shadowmap Offset?
- Shadowmap range?
- Shadow Slope Offset?
- Diffuse Shadow

Question #2: (FARTHER AWAY SHOTS)
I assume it is best to adjust the settings, per clip, for farther away shots to get depth and interest in ambient and diffuse shadows. What have you used to accomplish this?
- Ambient Shadows?
- Ambient Scale?
- Shadowmap Offset?
- Shadowmap range?
- Shadow Slope Offset?
- Diffuse Shadow

Question #3:
3A. When i make a movie clip, then later go back and change settings in "build mode", like Ambient Brightness", etc, it seems that the existing movie clips DO NOT reflect those changes. Is this correct?

3B. Do i need to "refresh" each view in each clip after changing settings?

3C. Does each seperate clip in "Movie Mode" maintain its original settings when the views were set for ALL settings in "Lighting, Clouds, Camera, Fog"? if so, how can you make global changes that will affect each clip.


Thanks again,

Bob

[Architectural Innovation]

btw, i have STILL not animated the "moonwalkers" or cars etc, or added all of the needed landscaping. I am still trying to tweak the settings and select the views for clips.

Thanks,

bob

[cbcarch]

Bob,

I can't answer all the tech. Lumion settings questions, but your scene is looking great!

Imagine how long this would take in Max or Revit........LOL

Keep going! Love the night scene. How 'bout an interior with lighting next?

[Architectural Innovation]

thanks cbarch! i plan on moving into the interior after the exterior is finalized and produced. The full animation will go from the exterior scenes, to the interior....hopefully. 

Bob

[Morten]

Question #1: (CLOSE UP SHOTS)
Question #2: (FARTHER AWAY SHOTS)

Good topic.

For the sake of consistency, it might be useful if you uploaded a small test scene with a few Model Library trees/cars etc, the correct time of day and 2 pre-made clips (close-up + farther away shot), so that everyone could give it a go, and we could compare the results directly.

Question #3:
3A. When i make a movie clip, then later go back and change settings in "build mode", like Ambient Brightness", etc, it seems that the existing movie clips DO NOT reflect those changes. Is this correct?

3B. Do i need to "refresh" each view in each clip after changing settings?

Movie effects that affect the Weather/Lighting/Fog/Camera settings will have priority over any changes you make to those settings in Build mode.

For example, the following effects: Fog Brightness, Sun Position, Sky Brightness, Exposure, Focal length etc.

If you ever encounter a case, where you haven't added any effects that affect the Weather/Lighting/Fog/Camera settings, and you are still unable to get the changes in Build mode to show up in Movie mode, please make a new post in the Bugs & Issues section.

Also, please read this post:
http://lumion3d.com/forum/index.php?topic=3346.msg21071#msg21071

3C. how can you make global changes that will affect each clip.

Not all Weather/Lighting/Camera/Fog settings in the Weather section are currently available as Movie effects, so you will have to use a mixture of Movie effects and Weather section adjustments.

Also, make sure that you familiarise yourself with the difference between applying an effect to the "Entire Movie" (the button in the lower left corner) and applying the same effect to a single clip; an effect applied to the "Entire Movie" will always have priority over the same effect in a clip.

[peterm]

Just a few thoughts in other areas:

Not a shadowing thing, but it affects the flatness of objects (more so close up of course), and that is, are you using normal maps at least for the main brick textures of the building, and also for the roof (as it is also dominant in the view).

If the main views are more distant, then perhaps tweak up the normalmaps so that they are more extreme, creating more depth. Off setting that is that to get the best, you need highest 3star requiring longer render times, and sometimes for regular brick repetitive texturing you can get some artifacts (sometimes).

The footpaths and road also appear as single 'flat' colors so any sort of depth and breaking by using some alternative textures or decals may help.

[stucki]

i think you should turn down saturation a bit and maybe give the scene a little bit more blue.
its night. colours arent that saturated....

[Architectural Innovation]

Great suggestions guys! Thank you for your time.

>Morton,
i hope to get a good sample file up today. Great idea!

>peterm,
Yes! i desperately need to spend time on the textures and use normal maps for ALL textures. I also want to experiment more with transparent PNG overlays for differentiation.

QUESTION: I am at the point where i just want great, seamless textures and dont mind paying. I use alot of free ones (cgtextures, etc) and use photoshop plugin, filterforge, but i am looking for "THE BEST" large textures including normal maps available. I would like to have a huge library of reliable textures and normals to use quickly.
 ???SUGGESTIONS Anyone??

>stucki,
I agree. Saturation is always a tricky balance between global settings and material settings. I had the "Ambient Saturation" up before and turned it down. I will find a nice middle ground to "wash" the colors with the night a bit.

[Morten]

QUESTION: I am at the point where i just want great, seamless textures and dont mind paying. I use alot of free ones (cgtextures, etc) and use photoshop plugin, filterforge, but i am looking for "THE BEST" large textures including normal maps available.

Arroway textures are the best of the best, and I really can't recommend them enough. Gerard, the owner, kindly gave us permission to use smaller, modified versions of these textures in Lumion, so you might recognise some of them in the Material Library:
http://www.arroway-textures.com/

[peterm]

Other textures and models resources:

 - TurboSquid
 - Marlin Studios

Max and VRay users for HQ:
 - Dosh
 - Evermotion

[Architectural Innovation]

thanks again guys. sorry, i haven't been able to get a file up for comparison tests. been swamped!

bob