Topic: Remarks and suggestions on Lumion

[JB7756]

I have made lot of tests on Lumion. I think it is an innovative software on many point and v2 has solved many problems compare to v1, but I will make some remarks (sorry by advance for bad English) :

1- Ambient Shadows twinkling :
I like very much ambient shadows but there are some trouble in motion.
On this video, watch around the top of the column, you will see that the ambient shadow on the background vault vanish close to the column. There are the same kind of twinkling on other place in the video (around the windows on the left for example).
Test Vincennes 01

2- Grass on sloped ground limitation :
If I want to put a grass object on a sloped ground, it is impossible because I cannot rotate the grass object. It is possible for other object to constraint the vertical axis with the normal of the facet [F button], with not for vegetation ?


3- Painting the ground suggestion :
The brush could be improved with a system like photoshop.

a- In Lumion, to mix two ground textures, you choose a brush speed and a you left click for a time more or less long. I find it not very easy especially if the frame rate is low.  It could be better if I could choose a mix amount (opacity) like photoshop.

b- It could be better too if there are irregular brushes like photoshop. It allow to create more easily randomness patterns.


c- I use often my own geometry for the ground, because it is difficult to be precise with Lumion ground. But the brush is always displaying on the Lumion ground, not on my custom ground. So it is not easy to paint.


4- Automated grass and vegetation generation suggestion :
When you want to create a large wood you are oblige to plant trees one by one. It takes time. It will be better to have a “planting tool”: you define an area and a procedure create randomness vegetation. It could be grass, bush or trees.

5- May be it is a limitation of Lumion free, but I can’t import more than 32 objects because the page 2 of import library hasn’t been created. In fact there are more than 32 objects but they are inaccessible. I have to delete the ones on page 1 to reveal those that were on page 2.

[Morten]

Hi JB7756 , thanks for taking the time to provide us with your feedback (All of the points apart from #5 have already been raised by other users).

1- Ambient Shadows twinkling

The flickering shadows in your video is caused by the way the ambient/diffuse shadows work in Lumion (and many other real-time 3D applications).

Ambient shadows (also known as SSAO: Screen Space Ambient Occlusion) is an effect which applies soft shading to each pixel on the screen depending on how close 3D surfaces are to each other. Since the effect is only able to use the pixels on the screen as seen from the current camera angle, the effect "doesn't know" what's behind other objects, and can only take surfaces that face the camera into account. That's why the shadows seem to appear/disappear next to columns as you pan the camera from left to right.

All you can do is to reduce the Ambient Shadows/Ambient Scale and the Diffuse Shadow sliders, and try to avoid camera angles/movement that show the limitations of this effect.

2- Grass on sloped ground limitation :

Yes, trees and plants can't be rotated and this is a known limitation in SpeedTree (and therefore also in Lumion). In SpeedTree there is dedicated functionality for populating large areas (including slopes) with grass, also known as SpeedGrass, but this has not been implemented in Lumion.

3- Painting the ground suggestion :
The brush could be improved with a system like photoshop. It could be better if I could choose a mix amount (opacity) like photoshop. It could be better too if there are irregular brushes like photoshop.

Thanks for your suggestions (these and other ideas have also been proposed by a number of other users in the forum).

c- I use often my own geometry for the ground, because it is difficult to be precise with Lumion ground. But the brush is always displaying on the Lumion ground, not on my custom ground.

You're right, this is another known limitation in Lumion (and there are plenty of threads in the forum where this issue has been discussed).

4- Automated grass and vegetation generation suggestion :

This has also been suggested before, and there are detailed proposals here in the forum that outline how it could be implemented.

5- May be it is a limitation of Lumion free, but I can’t import more than 32 objects

As you probably know by now, the developers of Lumion limit the number of models that are displayed in the Model Library to a maximum of 3. I'm not sure if it is intentional or not that a maximum of 28 models are displayed in the Import Library though, so I'll need to ask them.

You can however, create a new folder manually in C:\Users\Username\Documents\LumionFree 2\Library, and place another 28 models in that folder. The next time you start Lumion, the folder will appear as a new tab in the Import Library.

[JB7756]

Thanks for your answers:

1- Ambient Shadows twinkling
OK. I understand that a real Ambiant Shadows could be too much heavy in computation for today PC.

2- Grass on sloped ground limitation
So, trees and grass aren’t simple 3D objects like others?

3ab- Painting the ground suggestion:
OK. May be in a next update?

3c- brush lag on a personalized geometry
Could be an important improvement. We can manage but it is not easy.

4- Automated grass and vegetation generation suggestion :
In a next update?

5- I can’t import more than 28 objects
I try your advice. If I add folders, it add tabs but there are all void even if I add objects into them. So it’s not working? It is very important for me to have at least 280 import possibilities. By comparison, the standard transport category have 11 tabs.

[Morten]

2- Grass on sloped ground limitation
So, trees and grass aren’t simple 3D objects like others?

No, SpeedTree objects only contain a heading value, not pitch and yaw values.

3ab- Painting the ground suggestion:
OK. May be in a next update?

That's up to the developers. To avoid disappointing people, they tend not to promise anything until they're sure that a given feature can and will be implemented.

4- Automated grass and vegetation generation suggestion :
In a next update?

See above.

5- I can’t import more than 28 objects
I try your advice. If I add folders, it add tabs but there are all void even if I add objects into them. So it’s not working?

Hmm, it works fine here. Did you remember to restart Lumion after creating the folders and moving the objects to the new folders?

[JB7756]

5- I can’t import more than 28 objects

I try with another folder name and keep one object (the default one) in the root folder. This is DIY but it works. Try to improved it in the future.

[Morten]

Yes, making folders manually is old skool DIY

Functionality that would allow you to do this inside Lumion has already been requested by others (there's a Wish List section in the forum which is only available for registered customers, so unfortunately you can't see previous feature requests).