Topic: Stretching Site Contours to Acad Mesh...

[wojocad]

I currently do still architectural renderings in AutoCAD using TIN meshes of building sites when the terrain is important to the design of the building.  Can I temporarily import a site model mesh into Lumion and then use the Terrain tools to stretch the Lumion site to approximately match an accurate TIN?

[peterm]

Hi wojocad

You can, but it would take more time than I think would be of benefit.  Also the terrain smoothing and terrain adjustment tools will not give you the same accuracy to match some meshes from AutoCAD.

.. to stretch the Lumion site to approximately match an accurate TIN?

Are you wanting to scale the Lumion terrain to any size of the TIN mesh?

The Lumion (editable) Terrain, where you can use the Terrain tools, is a fixed square of 2048mx2048m. If you work within that area, thats fine.  But you cannot expand the Lumion terrain to match an imported mesh if it extends beyond those distances.

What most of our users do is import their terrain as a mesh from their modelling tool, and then work with that as a model in Lumion.  Placing entourage and buildings etc on to the imported terrain mesh.  That mesh may be many kilometres in diameter.  The Lumion world size is 43km.  So generally you would have a flat Lumion Terrain, then overlaid on top of that as an object is the exported mesh from AutoCAD.

You can set the surface to match the Lumion terrain texturing and 3D Grass by making it a Landscape Material.  The imported mesh though is not editable with the Terrain tools.

HTH.

[wojocad]

Does Lumion allow you to "pick" points or intersections of imported TIN meshes to place Lumion objects like trees, cars, etc?  I'm used to working right in AutoCAD to add entourage.  Everything I do in AutoCAD can be very precise... which isn't really an advantage, but it does prevent flying people and cars.  I guess I'm wondering whether Lumion tools are "aware" of the imported terrain.  (Obviously, I haven't used Lumion yet.  I'm thinking about purchasing it, and have been going through the online tutorials and I'm trying to think ahead about what I'll be able to accomplish with it.)

Thanks.

[peterm]

Hi

Lumion uses the position of the mouse pointer to pick (very easily) any point on a surface.  You will have seen from some of the Tutorial videos how to place imported objects and also entourage.  Point and click to place, or to move.  It is also slope aware, and you can conform to terrain or to model (some things require tweaking though as it's a single point taken for slope). 

This applies to both the Lumion Terrain and to imported meshes.

All objects are referenced relative to the Lumion Terrain, for example some object placed on top of a roof has a height that is from it's point on the Terrain.

We have the Free version to look at (see menu link top of forum).  At present this is a somewhat old version of v3.2.1.  You can also request to get access to a 7 day Trial of version 5 via your local reseller.  You could then test to see if the terrain mesh from AutoCAD exports and imports OK and with suitable resolution for your needs.