Act-3D has released Lumion 8, its real-time architectural visualization software. New features include:
- A new styles feature that enables users to change the whole look and atmosphere of a scene in one click using several presets.
- A new daylight simulator system called Sky Light.
- Soft Shadows and Fine Detail Shadows options to fine tune shadow effects.
- Hyperlight effect for boosting lighting quality and accuracy when rendering videos.
- A new hand drawn outline effect.
- A new Model and Material variation effect to switch and compare between design options.
- Improved colour correction and layer features.
- A new Time warp effect to offset animation.
- A tilt shift effect for model style output.
- “Look at fixed point” for the handheld camera effect.
- A 2-Point Perspective slider for correcting vertical distortion.
- Mass placement for curved shapes.
- New tools for measuring and using Open Streetmap.
- Many new materials and models in the included library.
- 4k video rendering.
Lumion is available in a Standard version for € 1499 and a Pro version for € 2999. A free trial is available. More on Lumion’s website
i think for less than 5 years later these professional renderers must sell their stuffs for the lack of customers in archviz field 😉
seems that the price is pumped up but, at the same time, seems that UE have a new competitor in realtime news.
I have used Lumion pretty regularly for the past several years, and I have tried Unreal Engine many times within that same period. As of today, even with the focus that Epic Games has been putting on visualization with Unreal Engine development, they don’t really compare as much as you think they would. I do think that Unreal Engine could eventually reach the point that it would be like working with Lumion, but it is still a ways off in my opinion.
My experience with Datasmith and such from Epic reminds me of when I first tried out Quest3D, I was excited to try it out, but found the export/import pipeline as cumbersome as you would typically expect for a game engine when trying to use it for visualization. Even when Act3D first started converting Quest3D over to Lumion a lot of that workflow was still jankey.
Fast forward to Lumion version 4. I tried out their demo again since they were adding features that piqued my interest further. The export/import pipeline was nearly flawless at that time, and it worked with all of the software that I was familiar with modeling in. Each release since has built upon that momentum, and while I at times found their direction in development a little odd such as sticking with earlier versions of Direct X for so long, they have never failed to impress me with the final results.
That brings me to this point, Lumion is a little sluggish to jump onto real-time VR. While I am a little disappointed by the delay of adding that feature, I feel that when they do jump on it, it is going to blow away anyone’s expectations of what a VR tool can be. Just imagining it, their interface is already tailored in such a way that it could likely be directly ported to VR and be just as easy to use, if not easier.
If they’ll ever support camera import/export then I might consider it a serious contender until then I wait patiently.