Feature Spotlight: Sky Light, Soft Shadows and Fine Detail Shadows

Light and shadow: get them just right, and rendered images and videos “pop” with realistically textured materials and a sense of depth and space. 

Rendering a visually striking, authentic-looking image with a balance of light and shadow used to take hours, even days. With the old lighting and shadow methods, you were almost guaranteed some sweat and tears in pursuit of realism and lighting accuracy.

That was the old days. 

Now, with Lumion 8, you can instantly heighten your image’s sense of environment, realism and depth with the new Sky Light daylight simulator, the Soft Shadows feature and the Fine Detail Shadows feature.

In the two images above, notice how these new technologies enhance textures and detail while expanding the three-dimensional space and feeling of structures.

In this post, you’ll explore these cutting-edge Lumion 8 features and discover how you can best apply them to your renders. 

Feature Spotlight: How the Styles button can help you render faster than ever

We’ll explore how to make this render with only the Interior Style effect and a little optimization.

Final interior render, created in Lumion 8 with the Styles button and minimal render enhancement.

You’ve been there before: a deadline is looming and you need to render, fast.

Your architectural vision needs to look amazing and professional, not something cobbled together in a hurry.

Lumion 8 helps you capture your design in the best light possible and render faster than ever. By applying only the Interior Style, which includes the Sky Light effect and the Soft and Fine Shadows, we were able to go from a model like this…

…To something a little more beautiful and dynamic…

Featured Five: Check out this week’s top renders from Lumion 8 users

It’s now been five days since Lumion 8 was released, and since then, the reaction from architects, designers and Lumion users around the world has been positively amazing. 

We’ve also started seeing numerous images and videos coming out, showing Lumion 8 in action. There’s some truly incredible work by talented artists and architects, and in the spirit of sharing, on Fridays for the next few weeks, we’ll be posting our pick of five recent renders from Lumion users.

Check out this week’s Friday Five, and to get your work featured next week, post your renders to the Lumion forum or tag #lumion8 on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. 

Bathroom Render by Frank from CYCOT GmbH

Avid forum user Frank from CYCOT GmbH created this bathroom image with a model created in Allplan 2017 and rendered in Lumion 8.

Using a GTX 1070 graphics card, Frank was able to render this image in 35 seconds. No post-processing.

Credits: CYCOT GmbH

Country Home With Style by Joe LM

Showing off a country home with seven of the new Styles, forum user Joe LM was able to produce stunningly realistic renders showing this home at different times of the day. For this post, we chose the country home with the interior style.

For the modeling, Joe used SketchUp Pro and his computer hardware settings included:

- Intel Core I7-4930k @ 3.40 GHz 3.70

-  ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 Memory 8 GDDR5

-  Windows 10 Pro 64 bits

Credits: Joe LM

Residence 49 by Gui Felix

Gui Felix created this home exterior, titled “Residence 49,” by modeling in SketchUp and then rendering in Lumion 8.

Using a GTX 1080 graphics card, Gui was able to render a 1920x1080 image in 41 seconds.

Credits: Gui Felix

Luxurious Landscape by Ahmed Abdulrahman

The following landscape was rendered in Lumion 8 by architect and filmmaker Ahmed Abdulrahman. 

Including a full, lively scene with everything from a kid’s park to a modern-style water feature with overhanging benches, Ahmed said that this shot is “part of a  bigger landscape design project in Turkey.”

Ahmed’s computer specs for rendering this image include a GTX 1070, 32 GB of RAM, and an i7 6700HQ 2.6 GHz. Rendering time was about 18 seconds.

Credits: Ahmed Abdulrahman, arch.ahmed90@gmail.com

Beautiful Interior by Gui Giovanoni

While rendering one of his first interiors in Lumion 8, Gui Giovanoni said in the Lumion forum that he was “amazed by the professional look of the resulting images.”

For the interior below, Gui modeled in SketchUp and rendered in Lumion 8. Using a GTX 1070 graphics card, the render time was a little less than a minute.  Like all of the renders in this post, there was no post-processing.

Credits: Gui Giovanoni

Special thanks to Frank from CYCOT, Joe LM, Gui Felix, Gui Giovanoni and Ahmed Abdulrahman.

We want to see your Lumion 8 renders!

Want to have your work featured and shared with architects and designers from around the world? You can post on our forum or tag us with #lumion8 and you may be featured as part of our Featured Five posts. 

Learn more about Lumion 8, and the rendering technology behind these images, on the What’s New page. 

Lumion 8 is Available Now: Discover What’s New

Beautiful Renders within Reach

Lumion 8 is available now! Check out the release video above to discover how this latest version can help you create stunning renders in seconds.

So, the question on everyone’s mind: what’s new in Lumion 8?

Lumion 8 Teaser Video and Release Date Revealed

Mark it on your calendars! Lumion 8 will be released on November 6th, 2017. 

Curious about what you can expect? Take a close look at this teaser video made in Lumion 8. Anything strike you?

Want a little more? Below you can see some of the first images rendered with the new software.

Parisian Bistro, rendered in Lumion 8 with the highest quality enabled. Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. Render time: 18 seconds.

Farnsworth House, rendered in Lumion 8 with the highest quality enabled. Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. Render time: 22 seconds.

Farnsworth House Interior, rendered in Lumion 8 with the highest quality enabled. Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. Render time: 22 seconds. 

Stay tuned for more information and materials, and check out the countdown timer on the homepage so that you know the moment Lumion 8 hits the market.

Lumion 8. Beautiful Renders within Reach.

Don’t want to wait until November 6th? 

Remember, all new licenses purchased in October are eligible for a free upgrade to Lumion 8. So, if you bought a new license on or after October 1st, your upgrade is free. 

Visit lumion.hk for more information.