Lumion for Architects

Bringing models into Lumion from Sketchup (or other 3D modeling software, for that matter) is a fundamental and important part to utilizing the potential of this software. There are many ways you can bring models in from Sketchup, but bringing them in as .skp files provides the most flexibility and should be used whenever possible.

In later lectures we dive into scene creation, animating, rendering and other advanced techniques but in Section 2 (Lectures 4-6) we are operating under the scenario of just bringing a static model into Lumion from Sketchup as this is the most common workflow.

In this lecture we bring the museum in from Sketchup and learn how to texture all of the faces to utilize the realism offered by the Lumion texture library.

If you are comfortable using Lumion you may want to skip this lecture as it is fairly long and fairly basic.

Also note that you can download the Museum 3D model yourself by clicking the download tab to the right and unzipping the file.

In this lecture we continue the process of working with a static Sketchup model and go over the basics of scene creation including placing objects, effects and rendering still pictures.

If you are comfortable using Lumion you may want to skip this lecture as it is fairly long and fairly basic.

I've included the Sketchup Components (which includes the Museum model) in this lecture as well for your convenience.

The ability to natively import Sketchup models and refresh them whenever changes are made is the main reason why I try to use the Sketchup/Lumion workflow for my studio. In this lecture I go over how you can make a change to your Sketchup model and then refresh it in Lumion.

When I first started using Lumion I realized that I had to bring Sketchup models in as different components and assemble them in Lumion if I wanted to animated them. This kind of works but can really be a headache if you get a bunch of components as they placement dots will really start stacking on top of each other.

Because of this I developed the grid technique which allows you to bring in very complicated models from Sketchup and assemble them in Lumion while still having the control to animate and otherwise edit them without the confusion. I call this the grid technique and this course shows you step-by-step how to use it for your own models.

Download the included pdf to understand the numbering of the grid.

The grid technique is useful to prepare your Sketchup files but we aren't done yet. This lecture shows how you can bring the individual Sketchup files into Lumion and assemble them so you have a model that you can animate.

Grass is a fantastic way to give added realism to your models. Unfortunately it has to be your default terrain, but with a little work you can add a lawn to the museum. I also briefly go over texturing this assembled model although I didn't record most of it because it was very similar to the texturing in Lecture 4.

We spent a considerable amount of time preparing the museum to be animateable (I swear that is a word) in Lectures 7 and 8 and now we are ready to do our first construction phasing animation. In this lecture we discuss creating an appropriate camera path and how that coincides with the drop effect for a powerful construction phasing animation.

In this lecture we set up the camera paths for Scene 2 which shows some of the landscaping and the lobby area.

In this lecture we set up the camera path for Scene 3 which shows the top floor dining area.

Adding 3D text and sound effects can really help set the environment for your scene. While these seem quite different, 3D text and sound effects are actually very similar in placement and set up.

Another great feature of Lumion is the ease of rendering. Now that we have our scenes set up we can now start the rendering process which only took a few hours for this video.

You can see the final results (and hear my thoughts) in the next lecture.

Here it is! This is the final, rendered result of the work we have done so far. This was originally a 1080p render but I had to compress it down to 720 for this course. You can see this same version on my YouTube channel by clicking here.

Make sure to also listen to the included audio file. I added my own commentary after watching the final results.

In Lecture 9 we discussed how you can use the drop effect for construction phasing animations. In this lecture we discuss two more methods for phasing animations- clip plane and the move effect. Note that the drop effect and move effect methods require the model to be assembled in Lumion (using the Grid Technique or something similar) but the clip plane method can be used on any Lumion model, static or componentized.

Animating vehicles and people may sound pretty straight forward but it can actually be very tricky to get these types of animations to look right. While getting your particular animations to look just right may ultimately be up to you, I show you the methodology for handling the basics in this lecture.

So you need some snow? Okay, probably not, but I do show you that it is possible within Lumion. I also show some other weather and style effects in this lecture as well as how to make a cool time lapse video.

Don't be shy, let us know how your final render turned out! Email me and I can embed your YouTube video on Civil FX so that we can slowly build a record of videos produced from this course.

I hope that you can connect with me beyond this Udemy course. Feel free to email me sam@civilfx.com and give me any feedback, suggestions or success stories. You can always visit the Civil FX website to see more social media links and I stay fairly active on LinkedIn.

Thanks for taking this course. It helps keep Civil FX alive and feed my kids!

You can learn more about my other courses by clicking on my profile.

Also, honest reviews are not only helpful for the visibility of this course but they also help me know what I can do to improve this and future courses. Thanks!