Lumion 4.0 Preview from Lumion

Lumion has been increasingly recognised as the ideal rendering software for visualizing design and architectural concepts in superb quality video form. Right now, 25 of the top 100 Architect companies in the World are customers of Lumion. The introduction of Lumion 4.0 once again takes the Lumion experience to an even higher level. ‘Easy-to-learn’, ‘easy-to-use’, ‘super interoperability with so many 3D CAD packages’, ‘incredibly fast to get a fantastic video’ are all phrases that have become synonymous with Lumion.

25 of the top 100
Architect companies in the world are now
customers of Lumion.

Text and Titles

Turn your videos into a complete presentation by adding Text and Titles. You will be amazed at how quickly you can add fantastic looking titles and 3D text objects to transform your movie into a fully-fledged presentation. There are many combinations of styles and transitions available and you can even add your own custom logo. Creating introductions, credits, annotations and text overlays will take just a few mouse clicks. The 3D text feature is especially interesting if you want to add text information to specific locations in your movie. You can also intuitively adjust the settings to make your 3D text fade in and out of view as you fly through your scene.

Grass

Grass often adds a new dimension to the beauty of an outdoor scene. But the natural beauty of grass has traditionally been so difficult to achieve in rendered images and movies, that it has eluded almost all software up until now. A flat green-colored surface or a picture of grass is about the best that can be achieved with traditional software. Lumion 4.0 changes all that. Now you can have real grass! Grass that sways in the wind and which can be enhanced by adding rocks, leaves and flowers. The result is a convincing grass landscape, achievable with a just a few intuitive mouse clicks.

Sketchup (.SKP) File Support

SketchUp users will be delighted to learn that Lumion 4.0 directly supports importing native SketchUp files. This means that you no longer need to export your SketchUp file to a Collada (.DAE) format, instead you can save the SketchUp file in the standard (.SKP) format. This means that with Lumion 4.0 you experience a seamless workflow by using a single file format in both SketchUp and Lumion.

Lens Flare And Camera Effects

Lumion 4.0 includes new algorithms to simulate real world camera optics. A new lens flare effect simulates the response of real lenses on bright areas of the images and even has the ability to simulate lens imperfections. Lumion 4.0 also has Direct Metering functionality, which means that it is now much easier to get properly exposed images. Bright areas such as snow, fog and lighter materials will now be automatically optimally exposed.

New And Updated Content

The content library in Lumion 4.0 adds several hundred extra objects to the already-huge content library. The new objects include people, buildings, plants, trees, indoor & outdoor items, emergency vehicles, boats, trains and other items. Notably, the plant library has been extended with many more models of flowers and ground plants. In trying to cater for different geographies and cultures, some new tree species and people have been added, and the new tree clusters in the library, allow you to quickly build wooded or forested landscapes.

Falling leaves

A new effect allows you to add falling leaves to your scene for dramatic effect in autumn scenes. Together with the new vegetation colour controls and the snow effect you can now place any scene into any season.

Autumn Colours

Lumion already made it easy to create winter and summer visualizations. Lumion 4.0 adds another level to this functionality by allowing you to tweak the colour of all plants and trees. With little effort, landscapes can be transformed by autumn shades and hues. This effect combined with the ‘falling leaves’ function can create a wonderful Autumnal landscape.

Improved Fountains

Fountains can add beauty, atmosphere and dynamism to a movie. In Lumion 4.0, the fountain simulations have gone from good to great. The new fountains even include water refraction and foam effects.

Improved Motion Blur

Motion blur is an artistic tool as well as a way of adding realism to fast moving objects as it is one of the effects of filming with a real camera. The motion blur in Lumion 4.0 raises the bar on reality simulation.

Sun Study

Select your location on the Earth and your time and the new Sun Study feature puts the sun in the right place in the sky to give you a realistic impression of the light and shadows in your scene by correctly setting the light direction.

Improved Ocean

The ocean was always a strong feature of Lumion but in Lumion 4.0, it gets even better! New algorithms are based on models which accurately describe the way sunlight and reflections bounce off water. The result is a realistic and beautiful ocean.

64-Bit Only

Lumion 4.0 will only be available for 64 Bit Systems. If you are currently using a 32-Bit version of Windows you need to upgrade you operating system before you can run Lumion 4.0.

Upgrade Policy

All new Lumion licenses purchased on or since the 1st of October 2013 will automatically be converted to licenses of Lumion 4.0. You will automatically receive an email with the download location if you are eligible for a free upgrade. If you bought in September 2013, you can upgrade your ‘Lumion Pro 3’ license for €100 or your ‘Lumion 3’ license for €50. (Details will be available when Lumion 4.0 is released.)

Pricing and Availability

Lumion 4.0 is expected to be available via authorized resellers or online in November 2013.