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?

The short version is this — in Lumion 8, you can push the new Styles button to instantly create a beautiful render from your design. 

You can also turn on the Sky Light daylight simulator, cast soft and finely detailed shadows across your scene, and watch as your design takes on a jaw-dropping level of photorealism.

From communicating your project to a client to making a last-minute design change, Lumion 8 cranks up the engine for stress-free rendering with results sure to make you smile.

In this post, we’ll explore some of the new features with descriptions about how you can start applying them to your CAD designs.

What’s New in Lumion 8

Ever since Lumion 1.0 was released in 2010, our goal has been to help architects and designers make beautiful renders, quickly and easily. And a lot has changed since then.

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

After years of building cutting-edge rendering technologies, Lumion 8 presents a great leap forward into photorealism.

We also wanted to make sure that beautiful renders were accessible to every architect with the three core technologies of this release, including:

• Styles
  
• Sky Light
  
• Soft and fine detail shadows
  

You can find more information about these technologies below.

Styles 
The Styles button is the power of Lumion 8 brought together.

Once you dress up your 3D model with Lumion materials and objects, just click the Styles button and select one of eight styles. In an instant, your design becomes a stunning image with a backbone of balanced light, depth and realism.

Above: After dressing up this 3D model, we added the Overcast Style and then rendered without adding or modifying any other effects.

Within seconds, watch as your design transforms into a thing of beauty, something you can render right away or personalize in minutes. The styles include:

• Realistic
• Interior
  
• Dawn
  
• Daytime
  
• Night
  
• Overcast
  
• Color Sketch
  
• Watercolor
  

Rendered with only the Interior Style applied.

Follow the blog in the coming weeks for more information, tutorials and images showing the new Styles effect.

Sky Light
Think you’re ready to render? If you haven’t turned on the Sky Light effect, then…well…no, maybe not. This is because Sky Light is the one technology developed for Lumion 8 that heightens your image’s sense of environment, realism and depth.

Render of a living room demonstrating the Sky Light effect on interiors.

The new Sky Light effect is an advanced, daylight simulator for softening and dispersing your scene’s environmental lighting.

By turning it on, the sky itself suddenly becomes a remarkably accurate light source, and its effect is both striking as well as surprisingly comfortable.

When used in combination with the Soft Shadow and Fine Detail Shadows (found as part of the Shadow effect), the Sky Light strengthens the real-life interplay of these elements. Watch as the foliage and trees become photorealistic, and discover as people, buildings and landscapes suddenly look like they belong where they are.

Render inspired by “The Antheneum,” by American architect Richard Meier.

Soft and Fine Detail Shadows
Simulating realistic shadows was one of the most difficult parts of the rendering process, until now.

In Lumion 8, you can inject realism into your render by turning on the Soft Shadows and the Fine Detail Shadows as part of the Shadow effect.

Instantly, the shadows become softer, the penumbras grow.

Community center interior. Notice how the shadows on the floor and ceiling dissolve into the light, exposing depth and realism. 

Additionally, the hundreds of fine detail shadows are enriched and a realistic sense of depth permeates the image.

Above: these two images show a comparison of how the fine detail shadow feature (as part of the Shadow effect) impacts the look and feel of rendered grass.

The Box House. In this Lumion 8 render, you can see how the fine detail shadows, soft shadows and Sky Light come together to enhance the scene’s depth and realism.

Your Architectural Vision in the Best Possible Light

Lumion 8 also presents a wide variety of new image quality features to help you capture your designs in the best possible light.

Just a few of these new features include:

• “Hand-drawn” outlines (Pro only) — Clearly communicate the form of your design. Apply to photorealistic, sketch or artistic effects to draw a focus to your building’s general shape and form.
  
• Soften hard edges (Pro only) — Soften the corners of adjacent faces for a look that better represents the real qualities of physical homes and buildings.
  
• Beautiful new water — Lumion water now looks more realistic than ever and there are twenty new water presets.
  
• Tilt shift (Pro only) — Transform your CAD model into a scaled-down maquette of the real thing.
  
• 4K movie rendering* — Give your projects a visual edge that just can’t be replaced.
  
• Omnilight fall-off slider —  Illuminate the finer details of your design by casting the right amount of light.
  
• New fog — Immerse your model in an attractive, moody ambience.
  

New HD Objects and Materials

In Lumion 8, you’ll discover new HD materials and objects** that are purely extravagant in detail, surface shading and texture.

With 100 HD materials, you can give depth and realism to your buildings and landscapes. As a result, it’s easier for viewers to “touch” the walls, “smell” the leather of the living room couch and “hear” the sound of feet moving across the floor.

There are 168 new material options in Lumion, including 38 new stone and concrete materials, 10 wallpapers, 51 metal materials and more.

Enriching your renders is effortless with a host of new trees, more character models, new lights and much more.

Workflow Power for Faster, Better Results

Remove the timeliness component of the rendering process. With Lumion 8, you can take advantage of several new workflow advances:

• Model and material variation (Pro only) — Compare multiple options, balance a range of concept options and choose a look you can be satisfied with.
  
• New grouping function — Bunch multiple objects together and control them all at once.
  
• New layer functions — Easily organize the elements of your render, demonstrate phasing and achieve greater efficiency.
  
• Mass placement for curved shapes — Instantly place numerous objects in complex shapes, including curves.
  
• Time Warp — Shift the small movements of animated people, animals and objects in photo or video mode.
  
• New measuring tools (Pro only) — Make quick measurement checks without needing to go back to your modeling software.
  
• “Look at fixed point” feature for the handheld camera effect — Lock the camera onto a single target point.
  
• 2-point perspective slider — Give your model a solid, realistic appearance with a cleaner and more geometrically accurate look.
  

Order Lumion 8

Lumion 8 is available today and we’re excited to announce that it’s our biggest release yet — three incredible new technologies, plus numerous image quality and workflow innovations.

You can create unbelievable renders in seconds, capturing your design in the best possible light.

Visit lumion.com/buy to order Lumion 8 today.