L is for Lumion

I had never been good at realistic rendering, thus, for the past five years of study I always opted out for a rather fancy and surreal representation of my work, such is my final year project, The Tamed Giant was presented in a comic style! 

However, very recently, a fellow architect at the office had introduced me to this awesome software called Lumion, I was really fascinated at the quality of images it produces, and most of all the animated elements in it, like the rippling water, the swimming fish, the flying birds, the sun that rises and the people that move, more like shuffling, but hey... it's just too awesome and seemed way more handy than Maya and 3DMax. So I bugged him day in day out to install it on my computer, so he did. I had previously mentioned that Lumion comes in rather handy in comparable to those two epic software. But I like to make a point that based on my little knowledge and experiences with Maya and 3DMax, Lumion is a lot easier to learn for it serves merely for producing scenic representations and fly through animation, well, you could do a dynamic animation like weather or seasonal change with flying birds and what nots, but the object (say a building) remains static. Unlike it's two aforementioned buddies that can do so much more. You can't do collapsing or exploding building in Lumion, you can't make the building walks, while in Maya or 3ds, you could, if you are skilled enough. 

What I like more about Lumion is it doesn't just save me hours after hours that I normally spend on rendering, it also saves the Photoshop process. Lumion has a selection of background/landscape which can be altered to suit your object/building. 

So, I like to put up some images I produced in the process of learning the software. Bear in mind, I'm a newbie and these images depict how far a basic skill can get you. I got a hand in the software last week but only yesterday and today between the free hours at the office that I got to play around with it. 


(click on the photo for a better view)

I built a mosque in Antartica. Opss, they don't have trees up there, do they?

A night view of a bungalow I designed. 

Disclaimer: I don't designed the houses. I just used the 3D models for a little experiment.

For those who had been doing 3D rendering all their life, these images might be nothing, but the fact that they were produced in average less than  20 minutes each from a basic sketchup model without having to go through pixel rendering is truly awesome to me.

Oh, by the by,I had attempted to save a fly through animation, so I can show how beautiful the water, and flying birds. but it seems to be taking too long. by too long I mean, almost an hour. ahaha. but yeah, at the office, you don't  get the whole day to play around. So, perhaps next time then. If there is a next time. ahaha.

I get this adrenalin rush every time I learned a new software. It makes me kinda hyper in a way, and perhaps happy too. Ok, let's go shopping. Ops! *grin*