Topic: small features that would make a big difference in lumion 2

[ninjutsu3D]

Hi,

so asking the lumion team here.

Will lumion 2 have a full alpha range? Right now the under 50% is black and over 50% is white is really compromising a lot of old age, standard cg techniques. Like dirt map made with alphas, or lighting effects etc.

Also, will lumion 2 have  the ability to use specular maps, that's also really important and basic stuff. Like making the ground wet, when making metal stuff, etc.

Thank you!

Jay.

[Morten]

Hi Jay, as far as I know neither of those features/improvements will be available in the initial release of Lumion 2.

[Brian Hengelsberg]

That is unfortunate...so many architectural materials require translucency, the limitation of eventually alpha on or alpha off creates a pretty large hurtle.  I hope that it would make it to the "can do" list soon.

[Aaron]

Also, will lumion 2 have  the ability to use specular maps, that's also really important and basic stuff. Like making the ground wet, when making metal stuff, etc.

BW Specular maps are already supported via diffuse alpha.

[Morten]

Also, will lumion 2 have  the ability to use specular maps, that's also really important and basic stuff. Like making the ground wet, when making metal stuff, etc.

Just to avoid confusing anyone with my previous reply: Lumion uses a single texture mask for the reflection amount and the specular lighting amount when you use the Standard material in Lumion. In other words, you can't use 2 separate textures for the specular lighting amount and the reflection amount like you might be used to in some other 3D applications (That's how I interpreted your question above, Jay).

So, if you use the Standard material in Lumion, you need to save your diffuse texture with a combined (greyscale) reflection/specular mask in the alpha channel as a 32-bit TGA/PNG/TIF/DDS texture and load it in the first texture slot in the Standard material. Make sure that the Reflection or clip slider is set to 0.

Then adjust the Reflection strength slider in the Standard material. To put it bluntly, a low value means that the alpha mask only adds specular lighting, and a higher value means that both specular lighting and reflections of the sky/terrain etc are added to the material. You'll often need to experiment with the reflection sliders to achieve the effect you want, eg, low Refl. Sharpness, Reflection Strength and Reflection Fresnel values for leather.

This can to a certain extent make it look like there's wet patches on your materials, even though you're only using a single texture mask.

[ninjutsu3D]

Thx for the explanation Morten!

Looks good i will try it out!

Where is this little trick explained? In the user manual when you buy the software?

Never saw this anywhere. If there are other features like that, i would like to know where to get the information.  

But i think this way of doing is common to lots of real-time engine right?

Thx!

Jay.

[Morten]

There is no manual for Lumion.

The developers of Lumion (Ferry, Arthur and Remko) want Lumion to be so easy to use that a manual should not be necessary.

Also, if they made a manual, the moment they'd be done with it, many operations as well as the user interface in general would already have changed again.

So, the forum is currently the best place to find the information you're looking for.

[blendman]

Hey this piece of advice on Spec Lighting etc. is great!!  Many thanks!  You guys really know your stuff!!

Regards,

blendman