Lumion : Rendering and Landscape design

1. Introduction: Hi, my name is Shivani. I'm a 3D modeler and an artist. I finally decided to create this class. You'll be introduced to concepts of rendering realistic visuals for lumen. You'll learn how to create a model, how to add materials, and how to render images and videos. Anyway, I hope this online class will be beneficial for you. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks. 2. Designing your 3D model in SkethcUp: This is our first lecture where we will create our model. Let's begin with creating our modelling SketchUp. You can see here we get multiple options for measurements like meters, centimeters, or millimeters. I'm going to choose meters here as we are designing a landscape and we don't need to go for tiny detailed measurements. This is the interface you will get on opening SketchUp. Make sure your camera view is set to a perspective view so you can have a smooth workflow working with the model. I'm going to add a unique structure here to give my landscape and attractive view. I'm going to add a statue here. You can add anything, a temple or a house or anything. I've uploaded this statue model to the warehouse on SketchUp, or you can download from the below file section. So I'll download it here in our model. I'm going to bring it to a 0 or center because it's too far. Now you can see clearly how big it is compared to the average human height. I'll turn off edges and profiles from the style section here so you can have a smooth view of the statue. You can see it now, I'll move this aside as we don't need it for the moment. With the help of Sandbox Tools, we will create a plan if you cannot find it in your toolbar, don't worry, you can right-click anywhere on the tool section and just turn on the sandbox panel. I'll use the from scratch tool to create a plan and Mayor Kip mountainous later, click to make the first undecided its width. Either you can hover your mouse and choose width, or you can see at the bottom right corner, it displays the length of the box. You can enter your desired width here. I'll go 150 meters. This is fine. Now for the length of the plate. Similarly, you can either hover with your mouse and say it or you can type it directly. You can move in all bit by pressing your scroll button and shift together. Let me move so you can see it properly. I will go by entering 350 meters as this is enough for us. Now. You can see how big it is compared to the statue and human height. I'll turn on edges and we can create some bumps and our mountain. You can edit this plan by double-clicking left on it. As you can see, the smooth tool you can click on any point and easily lift it up, press it down to create a bump or small puddle. The radius of our smooth tool is set to 30 meters, which you can change as you desire. I'll start with it here, where I'm going to create a small mountain and place the statue up there. Make sure you make a completely random and be yourself, play around with it and create a completely asymmetrical design. I'm going to place these areas down to create space, to create a water pond or stream here. This is a better time taking process, so I'll fast-forward a little. I'll change the radius to 60 to move more amount of points and make it a bit faster of a process. I'm creating completely random bumps here to make it look natural. You can do as you desire. So I'll move to our point from where we are going to render the images. You can see that a huge bump on the back looks kind of big. So I'll press it down. So our main focus is on the statue and it will not block the rays are cloud view of the back side. Okay, so once you are done with it, Let's place this statue over the mountain. I'll turn off the edges so you can see it properly. This is gonna be our viewpoint, and I'm going to place at the statue here. I'll move it with the move tool here, right on the mountain we created. We'll take a look from the viewpoint to see how it looks. I'll make some small changes to make it look natural. Double-click on the plan again, two edits him. I'll change some areas here. This looks fine. Now. I'll change the mountain a bit again. Make sure to make it completely random. I will just increase the height of it and make it a bit flat. Bless this statue property. Now we'll align the statue on top of the mountain. I will slightly change the mountain top to make it flat for the statue. I'll place it here on top. Now I'll go to the bottom of our model and rotate at the statue a bit with the rotate tool to change his face in direction so we get a good view from our camera point. This looks fine now and our model is ready. Thanks for watching guys. In the next lecture, we'll learn how to export this model to lumen. Also, you can download the models used in this video from the description and feel free to comment if you have any doubts. Thank you. 3. Exporting your model to Lumion: Hello, In the previous lesson, we learned how to create this model. In this lesson, we will learn how you can export in lumen. To export it will click on the File, then click on Export and choose 3D model. You can save it anywhere. Make sure you save it as a DIE file. This means Collado file. I'll name it as a landscape 3D model and click on x-bar. As our model is exported. Let's start lumen to import it. You'll get this workspace in lumen, will choose the mountain ranges where designing a landscape view. So click on it. This is how a look. Now to import the model. Click on the import option below and select the Import New Model option. Now choose the DAT file we exported from SketchUp and click on open. Now click on up to library and your model will be imparted in Lumen. Thanks for watching guys. In the next lecture, we'll learn how to align our model with a proper background and add materials to it. Also, you can download the exported model used in this video for the description and feel free to comment if you have any doubts. Thank you. 4. Adding Materials to your model: As we've learned how to import models in Lumen, let's add realistic materials to our model. Click on the Materials tool on the left side, which shows the bucket. When you drag your mouse over the plan, it will be highlighted. Click on it. You can see we get many types of categories of material here. As it's salons get model, I'll select nature and add natural grass. So these are all the types of grass textures will get. You can choose what you want. I want it to be light green grass. So I'll select light green grass from the available materials here. Okay, This looks great. Now let's add material to the statue. I'll click on it to give it a texture. It's a big statue, so I will give it a rock texture here. I'll go to nature and select rock materials. As you can see, these are all designer rocks and may look unnatural. I'll choose outdoor and go to stone to see what we have here. This pavement stone texture material will look perfect on it. So I'll select that here. Our model is ready with realistic materials. The next lecture, we'll learn how to create water and add objects to our model. Feel free to comment if you have any doubts. Thank you. 5. Creating water and adding objects in your scene: Hello. We've lent out to what realistic materials to our model. Now let us move on to the main thing, creating the scene. I'll show you some quick methods to add objects quickly with the mass placement tool will create the wall of first. To do that, click on the landscape option from the Tools. Select the second option showing single zigzag lines of water. Then click on the corner point and draw a plane stretching to the opposite corner of our model. You can see our water is ready. You can edit the area by four cornered error option here called the stretch. Now we'll decrease the height of the plan and take it to the right place with the height tool option. This looks great. Now, let's go to viewpoint and see. Now we'll add objects around here, such as trees, rocks, flowers, and some birds. Go to the Objects Toolbar from the left side. Click on nature, then click on the objects and choose any type of tree you wish. You can place it anywhere on the plane to place more trees or any other objects anytime. What we'll do here is select the slash icon below the placement tool, which is the mass placement tool. Now, select the tree you wish to place in the scene. Now click on a pole where you want to start placing objects and you'll see a line and I drag it over to the endpoint where you want to stop placing the object and left-click on the mouse. You can see it'll show you this table. So click on the plus icon to add my trees. You can add as many as you want. Click on Save. Now, let's randomize placement with tools inside the table. I'll create another mask placement here. With a number of items option you can increase or decrease the number of objects placed between the end points of the line. With the randomized direction option it will rotate the objects are its place randomly with a randomized spacing along the line option, you can randomize the space between each object to make it look more natural with the randomized offset from the line option, it will place the objects away from the line with random width. With a direction option, it will change the direction of placement. I don't want to change it here, so I'll let it be. This is a time taking process, so I'm fast-forwarding it. Some main points to keep in mind while placing an object in natural or landscape scenes are that the placement should be completely random. Give it time, don't rush, play around with tools to learn them better and place trees and other objects completely randomly to make it look more natural. After placing trees all over, it looks something like this. I'll be placing other objects around. As you can see here. Here's a suggestion. Always go back and go to viewpoint. Them are placing objects to check how it looks. The reason I'm fast-forwarding is because you have to create completely different and random landscape scenes. This will give you new ideas and help you to create a unique design. Always placed trees randomly, play around with tools, give it time, and don't rush. You can also add animals and birds to do that, go to animals and birds option. You can see we have a wide range of options here. There are birds, animals, and fish, flying birds. When you place a point, the point will be the center point around which the bird flies around in circles. After placing the bird, you have to lift the points up and it will change the height of the bed from the ground surface. This many birds will be enough. You can add as many as you wish. In the next lesson, we'll render this scene into a realistic picture. Feel free to comment if you have any downs. Thank you. 6. Rendering Images: Hello, We learned how to create a model so far now come into the main lesson of the course. Let's learn how to render images. Once you're done with designing your model, click on the camera icon on the right corner of the screen. These ten camera frames are preset. You can have ten viewpoints are preset, safety or model at a time. You can also scroll and navigate inside this frame. The area you see here in the frame is what will be rendered in the image. Here we have a focal length option which works exactly like a real camera. You can zoom in or zoom out of the focal length on an object are seen at suggests keeping your viewpoint far and then increase the vocal length for a better view. As I increase the focal length and adjusted the frame here, you can see it's looking better now and more defined. Here's an option called halite, which you can turn on or off and adjust its intensity. It's helpful when we are rendering an interview with the nighttime. The ads realistic effects of light in our renders. So let us stop. We'll go to a new effect, go to the camera and choose the two-point perspective view option here. As you turn on the option, you'll have greater control straightening structures that look like they're leaning over while correcting lines that seems skewed and disorientating. Now we'll go to effects again and add effects to our model. With this, generally, we can adjust the sun orientation and effects in our model. Son height. You can adjust the height of the sun, where if you bring it below 0, the sun will go below the horizon and night will be on. With a subheading option, you can adjust the way your son is heading or its place. Circling at the height we set the sun high option with some brightness. You can adjust the brightness of rays of the projecting on the scene with the Sun Disk Size option, you can adjust the size of the sun, will come back to it later. Now let's add the Cloud effects of our model. We can adjust the clouds existing in our model. Here we have our Cloud settings with this cloud option, you can change how the cloud appears in your render. The client plays a vital role in our landscape view. You have to make sure that they are look natural, not too bright or not too dark. Let us understand all these clouds settings. With the position option, you can alternate the position of clouds. This Cloud speed option is for rendering video. Welcome to IT in the coming lessons, the master cloud amount sets the proportion of the cloud in our model. With this low cloud option, you can adjust the number of low clouds in the model, and it is the same with the high cloud. The cloud brightness option will adjust the brightness of the cloud, which will affect our model. As you can see how it's reflecting in the water. It's preferable to keep it a little low to avoid water from changing its color because of leaf or activity. With a Cloud softness option, you can see how it changes the color body. It makes it smoother and software and increasing it, which looks good. The sky brightness option is different from Cloud brightness. It will adjust the brightness of the sky. On decreasing it, it will make the background darker, like monsoon season. The Cloud preset will automatically adjust the Cloud location in the scene depending on variables. You can change it. It's not necessarily the high cloud preset will adjust the presets as the Cloud preset option. But for the high clouds, HBCU clouds in movie render will be utilized and rendering the movie which we will see later. Now let us adjust the sun settings. We learned about the sun setting before. I'll adjust them for a render. While doing this, let me give you some tips. The Sonya landscape should be half covered if you are wishing to random morning or evening view, which gives it a natural aesthetic view. Here I'll create an evening view where sun rays are reflecting in the water and I'll keep the sky a little bit of an orange is pink. While adjusting these parameters with mouse arrow, if you press Shift, you can adjust them to three decimals. In short, the line will move slowly. You can see how the sun is changing its position in a circular direction at a certain height with his son heading option. You'll learn about these tools once you practice enough, play around with all tools, understand them and give it time. The sun, this tool will change the size of the sun in the model. Let's render an image after little more adjustments with parameters. I'm turning on hyper light because it's going to be an evening view. And this will give realistic light effects to trees. I'll start this effect preset to the camera here. And now coming to rendering, here are some options that you can see email or generate a low quality image of 1280 into 720 pixels. Similarly, you can see the pixels written below the options. When you want a high-quality image, you can go for print or poster quality. You will take some more time to process and rendering the image. I'm choosing Desktop here because that's enough for now. I'll save it as a PNG file. Now I'm skipping the procedure which will take three to five minutes depending on the render quality you choose. An image render is complete. Let's see it. As you can see the details here, the lens flare from the Sun, the trees and their shadows, clouds, sky and the birds flying. This looks great, but those little bush below the mountain lockout, I'll make some changes to that and render again. As we've already studied the sun and cloud parameters, I'll fast-forward this. You must give it time, change all settings so you can understand him. I make sure your design is random because that will make it more natural while designing a landscape. As you can see, there's nothing decided. I'm trying all parameters here until I get view I desire. You must try all of these, alternate them until you get what you want. You can understand them as much as you practice. New render is ready. Let's check him. You can see our decreases some brightness or sunrise and not reflecting in the water, and this looks like a sunrise. I also made Cloud softer. This is it for this lesson. In the next lesson, we'll learn how to create a dare to night time lapse video in Lumen. Take time and practice. Feel free to comment if you have any doubts. Thank you. 7. Rendering time-lapse video: Hello. We learned how to render images so far in this lesson, we'll learn how to render their time lapse video step by step. On your main screen, click on the movie icon and now press the record button. It's similar to rendering images that have you seen this frame will appear in your video and you can adjust the focal length similarly. What I'll do here is choose a point and set the frame on it from where I want my video to begin. You can adjust the height of your camera from these buttons after you're done, the deciding our starting point will click on the big camera icon on the bottom of the screen. You can see here our starting point is safety here is a frame. So let us choose the ending frame. I'll keep you a little bit away from this. OK, so coming to the next step here, you can decide the delay between the first frame to the second, or you can set the duration of your clip. I will go with five seconds because that's enough for now. You can keep it as much as you want. The moment you keep the slow and smooth. The video will be between your frames, and it will also take more time to render it. You can also keep more points of frames, but by creating a simple time lapse, so we only need two. Now let's preview it. This is how my camera will look from frame one to four am. So let us save it and work on it. Here you can add multiple clips and render them all together. All single clips at once. From this option, you can edit the clip again if you wish to make any changes to the frame of starting and ending point, you can add effects. Similarly, as we added in image rendering, so let's first a two point perspective to get a view at a proper angle. Now let's add sound effects, as we did in an image rendering. This is completely similar to image rendering. You can see all these parameters work the same on altering them. Let's not cloud effects now. Carl promises and rendering video are also the same as we had in image rendering. Now, let's start by adding motion to the Sun for our time lapse video, so we'll have to first point out just the Sun. The place from where it will start its motion. I'm going to make the Sun move from left to right in the rendered video, so I'll place it on the left side and also adjust other the parameters. OK, this looks fine now. You may have noticed this button in video rendering options. It's called keyframe, and it's used to give motion to these parameters in the video. What I'll do is add a keyframe at the beginning of the video and end of the video. So the parameters will change at both the key frames as I set them. To add a keyframe set, the video point at which the keyframe effect should stop as I want it at the beginning of my video, I love it here. Just click on it and it will be added at the point that you want it with the current setting of that parameter. So here's our first keyframe. Let's add another one somewhere around the end of the video. Now, hover to that point and add it there. Now click on it again, and it will be added to the second point. So these are both key frames. So now I'll adjust it for the second key frame. Click on the second click frame and set the particular parameter you want. If I know it just the Sun heading, it will be the same throughout the video unless and until I add key frames on point, as I did with Sundheim. With these smaller rows, you can switch between key frame and that points. I'll go to the first key frame and add a key frame for the Sun heading option here. It's similar to what we did before adding a key frame. So I just did the parameter here and added the first key frame. Now I'll go to second key frame and alternate the son heading parameter for that point. So let's see how this will animate in the video. I'll make some fewer changes to the parameters because it does not meet my expectations. I would use the sun's height and the Sun heading on the right side. OK, we're all set with the Sun and the Sun heading down this ad keystroke for some brightness. He's the first keystroke and he's a second. OK, let's alternate parameters now. OK. This is all set. Now we'll move on to cloud settings and add keyframe for clouds. What we'll do is sell promises here, as I want throughout the video, then we'll add key frames for options. We want to animate all change in the video. OK, this looks good. Let's move to the beginning of the video and key frame for the cloud position. He goes to first keyframe and his a second I'll increase the position option as it generally changes positions, so we will be able to move clouds in the video. OK, let's play it. This is how it looks. I'll make small changes to the sound settings here because it looks too bright. I need to change the soon heading because the Sun is heading in the wrong direction here. OK, this looks great. So let's turn on Hitch Ku Clouds in movie render to get high quality clouds in the render video. After you're done with it, what we will do is click on this big icon called Save the Movie. Here are some options you'll get for the final output quality. You can choose as high as you want, but make sure you remember they'll take more time to render as the quality will be higher. I will go with production quality, which is average, and I'll choose 25 frames per second and 720p quality. You can choose as you want. Now, click on the Stop movie export button aisle name as landscape time lapse and then click on Save. I'll skip the video rendering process because it'll take some time. So our video is exported successfully. Let's go and check him. You can see the details in daylight animations here. This looks great. The birds in the water are also animated here. The clouds moving and everything looks great here. So that's it for this, cos if you guys have any doubts, feel free to come in. Thank you. 8. Tips and suggestions: Hello guys. In this lesson, I'll give you some tips and insights that I practice myself while working in Lumen. I hope these suggestions and tips will be helpful to you. First thing is to decrease the quality and editor mode. To change this, go to settings from the right bottom corner. And you can turn off high-quality trees and grass in the editor. Turning this off, we'll reduce the quality of trees and grass in editor mode, which will make your workflow smoother, fast and easy. Reducing inequality does not affect the renders, so don't worry about that. The next thing is high-quality terrain. This is the same as what we did with trees. This will only affect the editor mode, not your render outputs. The next option here is the mute sounds option. This is optional. You can turn it off if you want to mute sounds that you added the scene while you're an editor mode. Now the main thing, editor quality, I always prefer using it on the lowest setting. This will help you work faster and it will take much less time in navigating and loading objects tier model. The rest of the options here are optional. You can change them as you wish. All right, the next main and most important thing you should keep in mind is always add details where necessary. Let me show you in this landscape model, you can see here I've only added the trees and other details of the places that are visible from our camera point. The rest of the places are empty. This will reduce the load on your laptop or computer, help you load faster. And the main thing, this will save you time. So make sure your first decide the points from where you want to render your images or video clips, and then our details to those areas visible from your points. The next thing is the two-point perspective view. I use this camera feature in all my rendering works. Always add this camera effects and turn it on In your renderings. How does it help? You'll have greater control straightening structures that look like they're leaning over while correcting lines that it seems skewed and disorienting. Also, it will make your render look straight commencing the next thing you may have noticed that I use focal lens except for navigating forward to the point. So I suggest you always render images some distance away from the camera point and increase the focal length later as per your requirements. Increasing focal length Hampshire render look perfectly focused on a view and make sure rendered area modified. While rendering a video clip, I always prefer to make short clips. How would you suggest you make short clips instead of one long movie? Each one starting and finishing at carefully chosen points in your model. This allows you to show more of your model and to focus on the point you want to emphasize. One more thing I would like to add with camera tips, allow the viewer to get a good look at what you are trying to show by slowing down the camera movements, move past the objects you want to share closely enough and slowly enough that there can be appreciated. Simply taken two shots are very close to each other in lumen to make a single clip can be very effective. Finally, apart from all this, I would always add to try and be creative with unique ideas, play with tools to understand them better and give it time. Thank you. 9. Class project: Hello. In this class, we learned how to design and render the landscape model with lumen. So you must try to create something as part of your class project and upload it here. Try to think about an idea for the design of a landscape scene, then design it as a plan in SketchUp or any 3D modeling software exports, illumined ad materials and then render with different effects and your creative design. You can find these details in the projects section. I've uploaded all files used in class for reference, but tried to come up with a new creative idea. I'll be looking forward to your project works. Please let me know in the comments section if you have any doubts. Thank you.