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    Lumion Transition to Subscription

    Posted on by Rikki Kenzhebayeva
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    Lumion Transition to Subscription

    End of perpetual licenses on February 14th

    We wanted to let you know that from February 14th, 2023, Lumion will no longer be sold as a perpetual license. This applies to both new licenses as upgrades.

    Subscriptions now offer a more flexible, affordable, and convenient way of staying up to date with Lumion’s new features and content, at no additional cost. This means that with a Lumion Subscription, you have guaranteed access to the latest version of the software, including the upcoming release of Lumion 2023.

    Upgrade Standard to Pro subscription

    Now is the most affordable time for existing Lumion 11 users and older to upgrade your Lumion license. Existing customers of earlier versions of Lumion can benefit from an upgrade to a subscription at a significantly reduced price until February 13th, 2023.

    For customers, this will truly be the last possibility to buy a new one or upgrade to a Perpetual license. Adding a seat to the existing Perpetual license is also possible until February 13th, 2023.

    Lumion 12.5 is now available as a subscription. This means more flexibility and more frequent updates.
    By upgrading to a subscription you’ll be among the first to get Lumion 2023 when it’s released, at no additional cost.

    How does the upgrade from perpetual to subscription work?

    • You still own your perpetual license
    • You retain the same number of seats
    • Always up-to-date on the latest version
    • Includes free upgrade to Lumion 2023

    Can you convert a current perpetual license to a subscription license?

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    You wonder if it is possible to convert a License Key from Perpetual to Subscription without losing your current License Key.

    1. Here's how it works:

    Yes, you can upgrade your Perpetual License Key to a Subscription License Key. You have lifetime rights for your Perpetual License Key and if you decide to upgrade it both License Keys will continue working under the following rules in sections 2 or 3.

    For more information on how the License System works, visit the article below:

    2. What happens if you upgrade a Perpetual License Key to a Subscription License Key?

    2.1: The status of your current Perpetual License Key is set to ‘Upgraded‘ in your Lumion Account.

    2.2: A new Subscription License Key is issued and the Lumion Account is updated.

    2.3: The new Subscription License Key retains the same number of Seats as the upgraded Perpetual License Key.

    2.4: This means that if (for example) your Perpetual License Key has 2 Seats and you upgrade it to a Subscription License Key, an equal amount of 2 Seats can still be used in parallel on different machines.

    2.5: Your Perpetual License Key can still be used if already installed on one or more machines.

    3. What happens to your Perpetual License Key if you cancel your Subscription?

    3.1: Your Subscription License Key will be set to ‘Disabled‘. This means it can no longer be used after the Subscription Term ends. When the grace period expires, status will be changed to ‘Expired‘. See section 3.2 below:

    3.2: Your Perpetual License Key is then reactivated and set to ‘Active‘ and you will only be able to use the Lumion version(s) associated with the Perpetual License Key.

    In case you decide to renew your Subscription License Key during the grace period, then section 1. is applicable again.

    3.3: Important! Lumion files are not backwards compatible.  If you saved your Lumion files in a newer version of Lumion, and you revert to a previous version of Lumion that was associated with your Perpetual License Key, then you will not be able to open the .LS files.

    See also:

    Contact us to learn more about the transition to subscription and available upgrade options!

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    Bring your designs to life in Lumion 11.5

    Posted on by Rikki Kenzhebayeva

    This story was originally published by Lumion on the Lumion Blog.

    With Lumion, you can render more than a building. Render your client’s dream home, render a story about design that moves emotions, render the space where life happens.

    A building begins as a structure. Walls. Floors. Roofs. Windows and doors. All expertly crafted into a beautiful arrangement of form and function.

    When looking at the 3D model, however, you might feel as if something is missing. Maybe it doesn’t capture the energy and atmosphere of the space and its surroundings. Perhaps it doesn’t ignite emotions or make you want to be there. Whatever it is, there’s something about life that’s just not easy to show in CAD.

    With Lumion, you can bring your vision to life and tell a richer, more immersive story about the design’s role in the real world. A story that sparks imagination and helps clients fully visualize how life could unfold within those four walls.

    From the small experiences you share with others to the objects that decorate your home, life is full of feeling. The sofa, coffee table and chairs in the living room, for instance, become a gravitational center where families share peaceful moments together. Papers and pens and books are scattered across a busy home office desk, alongside used coffee cups and photos of loved ones. In the kitchen, the teapot boils and toast pops out of the toaster, signaling the start of a new day.

    These are not just objects, they are reflections of life. They fill spaces with character.

    Lumion helps architects unveil their designs as lived-in spaces, capturing the deeply personal connection between a building, the people who inhabit it, and all the unique objects they bring with them.

    You can render more than a building. Render your client’s dream home, render a story about design that moves emotions, render the space where life happens.

    What’s new in Lumion 11.5

    The latest version of Lumion reinforces its ability to make spaces feel alive with the everyday activities that occur there. You can let your imagination loose and tell a story about a room, a building, or even the entire project, exactly as you see it in your mind’s eye.

    Lumion 11.5 Pro comes with 123 new objects* in the content library, making it easier to add a human, personal touch to your renders. You can find 73 new retro-inspired objects that reveal the unique identity of spaces, including:

    36 eye-catching kitchen objects, including blenders, refrigerators, toasters, mixers and more.12 furnishings from another era, including café tables and chairs, a jukebox, a popcorn maker and more.
    11 timeless pieces of office furniture, including sofas, desks, chairs, table lamps and more.14 other stylish items, including clocks, radios, a sewing machine, TVs and more.

    Additionally, you can express delight throughout your scene with 50 new 3D characters, including a diverse variety of children, teens and adults of different backgrounds and cultures.

    These cheerful non-animated characters are ideal for communicating context, scale and emotion in the background of your project, whether it’s a sunbather relaxing on the grass, a child looking up with wonder, or a couple enjoying a beautiful view together.

    There are infinite stories to tell about your design with the mix of new 3D characters and retro-inspired objects in Lumion 11.5. When combined with Lumion’s existing content library of over 6,300 assets* and over 1,250 materials*, you’ll find yourself on a smoothly paved road to rendering creativity, to bring your designs to life.

    Availability

    Lumion 11.5 is available from June 1st, 2021, as a free update for Lumion 11 and Lumion 11.3 users. Lumion 11 users can download the updated version on your Lumion Account.

    Have more questions?

    Contact us today info@solidcad.ca

    Lumion 11.3 Release Overview

    Posted on by Rikki Kenzhebayeva

    Architects love using Lumion for one important reason — it breathes life into rendering.

    Lumion makes the process feel like a natural part of your craft, helping you produce beautiful results with ease at every phase of the design project. Its elegantly simple workflow guides you through a rendering experience peppered with moments of unexpected joy.

    Whether for design development or the big client presentation, Lumion 11.3 continues to enhance the rendering process by bringing architects and the art of rendering even closer together.

    No longer will you need hours of frustration and guesswork to produce compelling images and videos of your project.

    With Lumion 11.3, the flow of ideas from your imagination to the computer screen encounters so little friction that rendering becomes an effortless tool in your design toolbox.

    Show the life and emotion in your project, and enjoy the process along the way. Learn more about how Lumion 11.3 changes the relationship between architects and rendering.

    Watch the recording of the webinar by SolidCAD’s product specialists Samuel Plante and Stephane Faulkner and learn all you need to know to get started with Lumion visualization software.

    The webinar covers the overview of Lumion software including some of the new features from the latest release.

    Tip: 5 steps to great renders from Lumion

    Posted on by Rikki Kenzhebayeva

    This article was originally published on the Lumion Blog.

    You’ve finished your 3D model and imported it into Lumion. Now, it’s time to make it look great. With all of Lumion’s functionality just inviting you to transform your 3D model into a beautiful render, it can be difficult to know where to start. This blog gives you step-by-step hints of what you can do.

     

    Villa, rendered in Lumion 9.5 by Gui Felix.

     

    As intuitive and dependable 3D rendering software, Lumion makes it easy to quickly breathe life into your designs.

    Simply imagine how you want to show your design, and you’ll find a wide range of easy-to-apply tools, features and effects. But before you start building a scene and rendering, there are a few questions you should answer first — 1) how do you want to artistically communicate your model and designs, and 2) how can you make it happen in Lumion?

    Building an artistically compelling image or animation of your designs requires a vision of what you want to achieve. To enhance that vision in your mind, some questions to ask yourself may include:

    1. What emotions do you want to convey?
    2. Are you going for light and colorful, grey and bleak, or something else?
    3. Should the images look realistic or sketchy?
    4. Which parts of the building are you trying to emphasize?

    To help streamline the development of your renders, we’ve provided 5 tried-and-true tips for transforming blank 3D models into beautiful, compelling images and videos.

    Step 1: Find the best point (or points) of view in your scene

     

    • Use at least one composition rule when framing and finding a camera angle for your image renders. Just a few of these rules include ‘simplify the scene,’ ‘use leading lines,’ ‘be creative with colors,’ and so on.
    • When making an animation, set the camera height to the human eye level. The camera angle shouldn’t be too wide so as to avoid perspective distortion.

    Interior wave lounge, rendered in Lumion 9 by ‎Kamon Tangruen.

    Step 2: Set up the scene’s lighting

     

    • Find the best position for the sun so that it draws attention to the parts of the building that you want to highlight. You can use the “Sun Study” effect to accurately simulate the sun location at a particular location, time and date. Other effects such as the “Sun” effect and the “Real Skies” can help you control the environmental lighting in your design.
    • Add interior and mood lighting. Even if the scene you want to show takes place during the daytime, interior and mood lighting can subtly communicate that the building is being used. You can also use volumetric lighting for an extra atmospheric feeling.
    • Balance the shadow brightness and coloring with the context surrounding the building. For example, outdoor shadows tend to show with a bluer color.
    • Avoid a high level of contrast in non-important areas. This is because high-contrast areas can sometimes direct attention to the wrong points in your design.

    Villa in UAE, rendered in Lumion 9 by CRIO Design Studio in collaboration with Arch. Alaa Hossari.

    Step 3: Make materials look beautiful with texture and age

     

    • When rendering, enable “Speedray reflections” and put reflection planes on big, flat surfaces.
    • Tweak the glossiness slider of the floor and ceiling materials. In many cases, making your materials a little more reflective will work better than static, non-reflective surfaces.
    • Do not use simple digital colors, include plain green, red, blue, purple, yellow. These simple digital colors can look ugly when applied to materials. Consider using a more natural (and more realistic) color palette for the entire scene.
    • Sometimes it is better to replace diffuse textures with plain colors (using the top slider in the material editor) and use bumps but without maximal intensity.
    • Consider showing a little age and weathering with the “Weathering” slider, located in Lumion’s material editor.

    GIF showing various wall materials, many of which were included in the Lumion 9.5 update.

    Step 4: Adding effects

    • Use the “Color Correction” effect (especially the first slider — Temperature) as it adjusts the color tone of the image and adds dark shadows where necessary.
    • Add a little bit of “Chromatic Aberration” and a very tiny value of the “Fish Eye” effect for a small, optical imperfection.
    • Add “Sky Light” and “Hyperlight” for still images and videos. For the most impact with Sky Light, turn the Sky Light render quality to ultra (which also means “ultra-slow render speeds”).
    • Use the “Sharpness” effect and set the slider to a low value to make the picture look a bit more ‘flat,’ as if were printed on a piece of paper.
    • “Depth-of-Field” (DOF) is really useful for narrow camera angles. Generally, you shouldn’t use this effect if you have wide camera angles.
    • Always add reflections to water and glass planes.

    Step 5: Extra details – every single shot needs them!

    • Furniture is very important for interiors and exteriors. Select and add furniture models from the Lumion object library and fill out some empty spaces. The idea is to make the spaces look “lived-in,” where you show how people might use a building, home, public space, etc.
    • Cars are really effective models when forming the “border areas” of a still render or a movie frame. Try to avoid having cars in the center of your composition.
    • By including people models in your render, you can easily show your audience how you’ve envisioned the relationship between people and a building design. Nevertheless, make sure that your people don’t dominate the render. Their faces should not be too visible so that you don’t distract viewers from the model design. Using silhouettes from the library is a good way to achieve this neutrality with the scene’s people models.
    • You can effectively create picture borders and backgrounds with trees and plants from the content library.
    • Remember that the background of your scene has a huge impact on the look of your building design. Even if the background is blurry, having the feeling of a real city or forest in the background can enhance the realism of the scene while making the entire render easier for the viewer to understand and digest.
    • While the “Real Skies” are beautiful and realistic, they can distract the viewer from the building in some cases. If you feel that the skies are distracting, you have a couple options. For one, you can use one of the “clear” Real Skies or you can add the Sky and Clouds effect and turn up the “cloud softness” slider to blur the clouds. Another option is to turn off any cloud effect and adjust the “clouds” slider in Lumion’s Build Mode to create a distraction-free, clear sky. Below, you can find a picture showing the difference between “no clouds” in Lumion and the clear Real Skies.

    Making more beautiful, realistic, and detailed renders in Revit

    Posted on by SolidCAD

    3D visualization is an essential part of architectural illustration today. Renders allow you to communicate your vision and intent to clients and colleagues. This is why models or drawings are often sent out to be professionally rendered. This is an expensive but usually necessary process. However, it is possible to make high quality renders in-house using Revit or through the cloud.

    What makes a beautiful render? Like many things, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It is in the nuance of the materials you select, the lighting, the details you choose to include, and any post-production editing.

    Here are a few thoughts on how to start making more beautiful, detailed renders in Revit.

    I’ve wrapped them all up in a short video at the bottom of this post.

    Materials

    Materials are the foundation of every Revit render. They are what gives an element in Revit its color, context, and texture. They are part of the scene and should be adjusted accordingly.

    The default color in Revit is grey. Leave the materials on their default setting and when you hit the render button, you will get a series of grey blobs with no information or appeal.

    Luckily you can easily change this by adding texture to the material. Look in Revit’s image library or Google JPEG’s or PNG’s with your desired texture. Remember that you can also experiment with attributes like reflectivity and transparency to get the textures looking just right.

    Details

    It is the details that make a render feel realistic. Buildings do not sit in a vacuum. Neither should renders. The more detail you are able to add to your render, the more more realism there is to your images especially when you work with real-life details. Beautiful renders are photo-realistic. As in photos – trees, people, and other outdoor elements – create the scale and real-life feel. Real pictures are never perfect and a hundred percent clean so neither should your render be.

    Sun and Artificial Light

    Light is the most important aspects of a rendered image. The lighting of your building should match the lighting of your surrounding. Everything should look like it works and is meant to be together. The shadows should look good and the lux, luminous or wattage should be correct on the artificial lights you are using.

    Although you can adjust the exposure afterward rendering you don’t want to be spending all your time doing adjustments. Try to set up the image correctly from the very beginning. This becomes even more important if cloud credits are involved.

    Tip: It’s a good idea when trying to render your design to have lights hidden away from the building. This will add some hidden light in the hidden corner or in the back of the camera to give some illumination to the building, just make sure to delete them where they are not needed.

    Editing the Render

    You can adjust the render after you have rendered it. This is a good way to make minor changes without having to render all over again. You can make things darker or lighter. Change the color make it warmer or cooler. It is sometimes essential to work on some area of the scene to add some dramatic shadow or to correct some texture. You can do this within Revit without having to export to another software like Photoshop and it will hopefully save you time and money..

    Walk through the rendering process with me.