Tips & Tricks Lumion

Boost reflections

Lumion in generel are generating reflections, those reflections are very basic and in order to create more realistic reflections we actually have to tell Lumion which surfaces to focus extra on in order to create more realistic renders. To demonstrate, i'll show two exact same renders where the first one is without the boost and second with.

Without

With

So as we can see, a big difference. To apply this we need to make adjustments to the Reflection layer in the left toolbar by pressing on it.

In here, navigate to "Reflection Planes" in the drop down menu and press on the pencil logo.

In here, you can navigate around the scene and select the surfaces you'd like to boost reflections on. In most cases it will be glass-surfaces, but might as well be ground or facade material that have some reflections already. Select the plus sign in the bottom corner and after that assign the surface. You can select up to 10 surfaces.

This reflection planes will increase rendertime so be careful with adding plenty of them, start with a couple of ones and see if it's enough.

Once you're satisfied, press the blue logo in the bottom and you're done!

Presets

So we've covered the premade templates inside of Lumion that are super effective to use, we will now take a look at a couple of more interesting effects that could be useful for some projects, and we will also learn how we can save, load and copy presets. This means we could finetune a specific template and then save this one out and either use for future projects or send to colleagues who'd like to use the same one.

Blueprint & Styrofoam

Blueprint and styrofoam can be useful, this can be found if you press the FX button on the left side.

You'll then find those effects under the category Artistic 2.

Blueprint Effect.

Styrofoam Effect.

Copy, load and save effects.

Lets now take a look in how to transfer this premade presets. If you select the camera you'd like to copy effects from first, then press the three lines in the top left corner.

Edit - here you'll find the copy and paste buttons. This can be used to transfer effects from different renders. Remember that you once you've copied the effects you can apply this to renders, animations and panoramas.

Load - here you'll find the load and save buttons. Here you can either save out a preset and export that to your desktop. If a colleague for example would like to apply this particular preset they hit the load button and then select that particualar file.

And that's how we can save, load and copy presets!

Advanced options for models

Now we're going to take a look at a couple of advanced options that we can apply to models that might be helpful. First we're gonna learn how to replace objects we've placed out in the scene easily. Let's say you've filled your scene with some red benches, and you'd like to change this to another type of bench. If you select one of those benches and then look in the top right corner, you can press on the little triangle next to the previewbox of the object.

Once this is pressed a new menu will be opened. Now press on the icon in the middle that will select all similar objects in the scene, in this case all of my red benches.

Now let's press the button that will replace all these objects, then select another type of bench. And just like that we've replaced multiple objects quick and easy.

Lastly we'll take a look on proxies and how that could help us make the scene less heavy and more smooth. To turn on proxies we need to head down to the settings logo in the bottom right corner.

In here you'll find multiple settings which will all improve overall quality and smoothness in your scene. Remember that this will not compromise the render quality, this is just settings to make it easier to work in heavy scenes.

Editor Quality and Resolution - the overall quality Lumion will have when you're working.

Use Proxies - here you'll turn on that Lumion should create Proxies. If this is on Lumion will replace heavy object like vegetation with a more simplified model to increase performance. This is the comparison between proxys off/on.

Proxies OFF.

Proxies ON

So depending on your scene and computer, it's always good to know these options to make sure Lumion is running smoothly on your computer!