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Title: LUMION 3: Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts Post by: Morten on December 11, 2012, 12:49:51 pm These Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts apply to the latest version of Lumion (3.2.1). Please note that scenes and LS3 files saved in 3.2.1 are NOT backwards compatible with earlier versions. If you try to load 3.2 scenes or LS3 files in an earlier version of Lumion, models will be missing, i.e. replaced by red questionmarks.
NAVIGATION
(W) / (Up arrow): Move camera forward (S) / (Down arrow): Move camera backward (A) / (Left arrow): Move camera left (D) / (Right arrow): Move camera right (Q): Move camera up (E): Move camera down (Spacebar) + (W/S/A/D/Q/E): Very slow camera (Shift) + (W/S/A/D/Q/E): Fast camera (Shift) + (Spacebar) + (W/S/A/D/Q/E): Very fast camera Right mouse button + Move mouse: Look around Middle mouse button + Move mouse: Pan Mousewheel up/down: Move camera forward (CTRL) + (H): Reset camera pitch to horizontal viewpoint (O) + Right mouse button: Orbit camera. Double-click with right mouse button on models: Instant 'teleport' to the position that was clicked on.
MISCELLANEOUS
(F1): Editor quality: 1 Star (F2): Editor quality: 2 Star (F3): Editor quality: 3 Star (F4): Editor quality: 4 Star (F5): Quick save (Saves a file called QuickSave) (F7): View the Lumion terrain at the maximum level of detail. (F9): If you press F9, all trees and plants in the viewport will be rendered at their best level of detail, so that it's easier to see where you need to add more trees and plants in a scene. Home -> (CTRL) + (F11): Fullscreen. Home -> (F11): Maximize window with/without taskbar (press twice to toggle). Sliders: You can double-click on all sliders in Lumion to manually type in values. Press Shift while adjusting slider values to fine-tune them (more digits after the decimal point will be displayed).
BACKGROUND RENDERING
Lumion always renders movies and image sequences in the background, so that you can check your emails etc while it is rendering. IMPORTANT: You need to wait for the first frame to finish before you switch to other windows. Avoid moving/re-sizing/minimizing the Lumion window while it is rendering,
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SPOTLIGHTS
(https://lumion3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/LightProperties.jpg) To preview shadows from spotlights in Build mode: 1) Select the spotlights in Build mode to temporarilly turn on real-time shadows. To preview shadows from spotlights in Movie/Photo mode: 1) Go to the Photo or Movie section. 2) Apply a Global Illumination effect (New effect -> World tab -> Global Illumination). 3) Click on Preview spotlight GI and shadows in the effect panel. 4) If you want to view the shadows in Build mode, click on the Build with effect button in the top left corner. In Light Properties -> Optimize for, choose what is most important for each light: Accuracy: The shadows are updated every frame (Slow!). Every time you add a light with Accuracy turned on, the entire scene has to be rendered once more. Add 10 lights and the scene has to be rendered 10 times more every frame. Each light uses a 2048x2048 pixel shadow texture. Memory: The shadow from the light uses a static 128x128 pixel texture which is not updated (Fast, very low memory usage) Speed: The shadow from the light uses a static 512x512 pixel texture which is not updated (Fast, moderate memory usage) To reduce render times, we recommend that distant lights (e.g. street lights) in your scene use either the Memory or the Speed option, so that the shadows are not updated every frame. If your graphics card has enough memory, the best option is Speed. You would only ever use Accuracy for your lights if something that casts shadows is moving near the light (a car driving past a street light for example). Or if the light itself moves/rotates (stage lighting for concerts for example). Or if you need high-resolution shadows in certain areas (typically close-ups of interiors).
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GLOBAL ILLUMINATION
You must render images/videos with the Global Illumination effect in 3 star quality. If you render it in 1 or 2 star quality, the lighting will appear to flicker and you will only see a pixelated preview of the global illumination lighting on your renderings.
VOLUME CLOUDS
You must render images/videos with the Volume Clouds effect in 3 star quality. If you render it in 1 or 2 star quality, you will only see a pixelated preview on your renderings, and the clouds will appear to move and change shape as the camera moves.
REFLECTIONS IN LUMION
There are 2 types of reflections in Lumion: 1) Planar reflections (New effect -> World -> Reflection): This Movie effect allows you to specify up to 10 reflection planes in your scene. Any model surface which is co-planar with a specified reflection plane in your scene will have accurate reflections. This is ideal for mirrors, marble floors etc. The effect includes a Threshold slider which allows you to adjust the distance at which nearlyco-planar surfaces will be included in the reflection plane. The tradeoff is accuracy but it's usually not noticeable. Please note that if you have some nearly co-planar surfaces that you want to assign a single reflection plane to, you need to assign the plane to the surface which is closest to the camera so to speak. Every time you add 1 reflection plane, Lumion has to mirror all models & render the entire scene once more. For that reason, try to use as few reflection planes as possible: (https://lumion3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/ReflectionEffect.jpg) 2) Projected reflections: Projected reflections in Lumion rely on a single 360 degree panoramic reflection texture which is projected onto any reflective materials that are not using planar reflections. The projected reflection method is only an approximation and will never provide as realistic reflections as the planar reflection effect above. In Lumion 3, add
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OBJECT COLOURS
Objects -> Edit properties -> Object Color allows you to change the colours of many of the Transport, Indoor and Outdoor models, e.g. furniture and vehicles. Note that you can also copy-paste a colour from outside Lumion to any color selection window in Lumion. Simply press CTRL + C to copy a highlighted hexadecimal colour in text format, eg, "ff0000" (red), and press CTRL + V to paste this colour onto the solid bar on the right side of the color selection window. (https://lumion3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CopyColour.jpg)
TERRAINS IN LUMION
The editable part of the terrain in Lumion occupies a 2048x2048m square. Beyond this, you will not be able to change the height or paint the landscape. When you load a heightmap texture it will stretch to the full extent of the 2048x2048m square, but will 'fade out' to 0m along the edges to blend with the endless terrain outside the editable area. If you load a standard JPG file, 100% black equates to a terrain height of 0m and 100% white is equal to a terrain height of 200m. In other words, each greyscale step (from 0 to 255) is equal to 0.78125m. As for the height scale of imported heightmap textures, the RGB values normally range from 0 to 1.0, but if you create a 32-bit image in Photoshop (Image -> Mode -> 32-bits per channel), you can boost the whiteness (and the terrain height range) by up to x20. In other words: RGB 0 to 1.0 in Photoshop = 0m to 200m in Lumion RGB 0 to 2.0 in Photoshop = 0m to 400m in Lumion RGB 0 to 3.0 in Photoshop = 0m to 600m in Lumion Once you've created your heightmap, you'll need to save it as a 32-bit DDS heightmap in "32f" format using Nvidia's DDS plugin for Photoshop: http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop (http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop) TIP: You can also import your own terrain as a DAE/FBX object and apply a Landscape material to it. This allows you paint on it just like the "native" terrain in Lumion:
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MATERIAL SLIDERS
Try to experiment with each material slider to find out what the various values do. (https://lumion3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/MaterialSliders.jpg) Reflection/Clip/Bright: An important slider is the Reflection/Clip/Bright slider in Lumion 3 (Reflection or Clip slider in Lumion 2.5). This slider allows you to specify whether an alpha channel in your diffuse texture is used as a reflection mask (= Reflection), alpha clip mask (= Clip) or as an emmissive mask (= Bright). Scale: Material size. Set this to 0 if you want to use imported texture coordinates instead of automatically applied texture coordinates. Reflection colorize: Tint reflections with overall material colour. Reflection Falloff: Reflection amount vs viewing angle. Brightness: Material darkness vs brightness. Glossiness: Reflection blurriness vs sharpness. Bump: Material roughness (provided that you use a blue/purple normalmap (https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=normalmap& bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.d2k&bpcl=40096503& biw=1920&bih=1099&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi& authuser=0&ei=WJnlULT5BMbQ0QWXyICIBw)). Reflectivity: Reflection amount. Can be combined with a specular/reflection mask in the alpha channel of the Diffuse texture. Saturation: Black& white versus colour. Emissiveness: Material glow.
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USING LAYERS
About Layers: Layers are useful for organising large projects. The Layer buttons in Build mode allow you to show or hide models. You can also animate the visibility of Layers in your clips with the Show Layer and Hide Layer effects. (https://lumion3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Layers.jpg)
HOW DO I LOAD A LUMION SCENE ON ANOTHER PC? If you need to load a Lumion scene on another PC, you need to copy the Documents/Lumion 3/ folder to that PC. Remember to restart Lumion after copying the folders.
Alternatively, if you have Lumion Pro, you can also export the scene as an LS3 file which includes imported models. This makes it easier to move scenes between PCs.
HOW DO I LOAD A LUMION 2 SCENE IN LUMION 3? If you need to load a Lumion 2 scene in Lumion 3, you need to copy the Scenes & Library folders in Documents/Lumion 2/ folder to Documents/Lumion 3/. Remember to restart Lumion after copying the folders.
Alternatively, if you have Lumion Pro, you can also export a Lumion 2 scene as an LS2 file which includes imported models. The LS2 file can then be imported in Lumion 3. WARNING: Lumion is not backwards compatible, so if you save a scene or an imported model in Lumion 3 you can't load them in Lumion 1 & 2.
RED QUESTIONMARKS If you notice a red questionmark in one of your scenes, it means that the files for that model are missing in the Documents/Lumion 3/Library folder. It is currently not possible to display the file name of missing models.
Here's how to delete questionmarks in your scene: 1) Lights & Special objects category -> Context menu -> Selection -> Select all similar 2) Trash object -> Click on one of the questionmarks to delete them
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HOW DO I LOCK MODELS SO THAT THEY DON'T MOVE WHEN I MODIFY THE TERRAIN? Select models -> Context menu -> Transformation -> Lock Position -> On
HOW DO I MAKE MY OWN THUMBNAILS FOR MY MODELS? CTRL-select the object and make sure that its thumbnail is displayed in the lower left corner. Move the camera until you're happy with the way the model appears on the screen, and press and hold CTRL. Then left-click on the thumbnail to update it.
HOW DO I IMPORT ANIMATIONS? It is possible to import move/rotate/scale animations from some 3rd party modelling 3D applications, e.g. 3DS Max and Maya. The frame rate has to be set to 25 frames per second and the preferred export format is FBX file. Collada format (DAE) also works but the interpolation between keyframes will be linear.
It is not possible to import vertex animations, morph animations or bone animations in Lumion.
HOW DO I ORGANISE MY IMPORTED MODELS IN FOLDERS? You can create a maximum of 14 custom folders in the Documents/Lumion 3/Library folder. The folders and any model files that you have moved to the custom folders will appear in the Imported Model browser after restarting Lumion:
(https://lumion3d.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/CustomFolders.jpg_thumb.png)
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