January 25, 2013, 11:23:14 pm
Hi Arjo,
Lumion Free 3 is still in the queue.
The developers are busy working on
Lumion 3.1 which among other things, will include a benchmark function. This will make it easy to figure out how suitable a graphics card is for Lumion.
Once they are done with that, the plan is to work on a dedicated new viewer application for Lumion scenes (LS3 files) and finally, it will be time to complete
Lumion Free 3.1 
Regarding the secrets behind great renderings and videos, I guess it all boils down to how you compose your clips, i.e. the composition (what the camera is looking at), how the camera moves in a clip and which
Movie effects you apply.
The easiest part is the
Movie effects. We have in fact talked about making some
Movie effects combinations called
Lumion Looks which, as the name suggests, would make it easier to achieve various looks (retro, sci-fi, naturalism etc).
The hard part is how to edit and compose your clips - it's clear that users like BABE and Aaron have spent a lot of time practicing to get this absolutely right.