Regarding
the video I posted here: I'm not asking for a massage. Everything in the video is actually quite likely to be soon implemented in Lumion. Here's why:
Planar ReflectionsAlready in Quest3D since 2001:
Quest3D, had planar reflections from 2001 onwards
Check the mirrors in the "Moebius house" demo here:
http://quest3d.com/demos/It was made by a Quest3D user back in 2008. Quest 3D is the engine powering Lumion.
TVs with movies in themAlso possible in Quest3D.
In Quest3D, animated textures are streamed from files on the harddrive. In Lumion, however, the developers strive to include as many external files as possible in the Library and Scene files, so that they are more or less self-contained.
Add to that the minefield of playing video files with exotic codecs, framerates and resolutions, alpha masks if using .MOV files, combined with the new framerate types in Lumion, and things can quickly get very complicated to implement.
Quest3D users are usually quite tech savvy and know how to prepare their video files in order to make them work. I doubt that the developers want to place a similar burden on Lumion users.
So you see, the only reason why they haven't implemented custom video textures until version 2.5 is because they believed most Lumion users to be not very tech-savvy when it comes to video encoding. However, this didn't stop the developers from adding a "Movie from file" option in Movie mode... which only accepts .mp4 files. So, if they have trusted us to properly encode video in .mp4 format for Lumion's Movie Editor since version 1.0, they will surely also trust us to properly encode it for video textures in a future version.
After all, anybody can now create proper .mp4 files with Handbrake, which is free and requires no knowledge at all. Just load the source file and press the big green "Start" button.
See the "Home cinema" demo here, created with Quest3D:
http://quest3d.com/demos/It really adds a lot more life to scenes with screens. And in 2012, screens are everywhere in a project. When was the last time you saw an office or a home without any screen?
Global Illumination2 months ago, Remko hinted that Lumion 3.0 might have GI:
http://lumion3d.com/forum/general-discussion/lumenrt-3/...and it has now been confirmed for version 3.0. Thank you a lot, guys!
More Animated peopleWith the launch of Lumion 1.0 we were amazed to see people talking, making dance moves and walking. The logical progression, two years and four versions later, is to have a lot more of them. Animated people are actually one of Lumion's selling points!
Bringing your visualization to life is child’s play with the hundreds of entourage models in the model library.
For example trees that sway in the wind, moving cars, animated people, buildings, street furniture and much more.
http://lumion3d.com/details/And it has been stated that there will be, indeed more animated people:
More animated people (including seated people and different races) will be included in future updates.
Now, before you tell me: "If you want Quest3D functionality, then buy Quest3D"... Well, Quest3D is actually going to become an in-house tool for Act-3D. It's no longer going to be sold to the public as it today.
In the future, only the hardcore Quest3D partners we have currently will keep access to it and we might stop releasing the program for individual sale completely.
http://lumionautics.com/interview-with-ferry-marcellis/So the only logical way to fulfill the need for these functionality is to implement it in Lumion.
And I know they listen to their customers.
Many new features in the new version are a result of users feedback.
And that it's not rocket science for them to implement the features already in Quest3D (animated textures and planar reflections):
With Quest3D our development process is easy & fast… so there is a lot that can be done.
So you see, I'm not asking for Lumion to do anything unreasonable like fetching me a beer or giving me an Oscar-winner movie with the press of a button. I'm just expecting it to take the next logical step. I want to keep the optimism we felt when we first opened Lumion 1.0, and when we first read the interview Ferry gave to Bekerman. And I do trust the developers will bring back that optimism with V 3.0, so I have just purchased the upgrade.
So I guess what this critic with "The Attitude" now wants to say is...