Online Lumion Course | Raytracing & Advanced Techniques

We systematically ease you into the course by comprehensively introducing what you're going to learn, exploring the subject building—The Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St Louis by Tadao Ando—and strategically making a start on the sophisticated Lumion scene development. This foundational lesson establishes the framework for advanced raytracing workflows while introducing the architectural excellence that guides our learning journey.

In this comprehensive lesson, you'll systematically learn about the extensive rendering effects within Lumion to achieve superior levels of realism in your architectural CGIs that rival professional photography. Additionally, we systematically explain the essential art of self-critique to consistently analyze your own work, ensuring continuous improvement in output quality throughout the duration of design and archviz projects while maintaining professional standards.

An often-overlooked yet critical aspect of achieving photorealism in your render scenes involves adopting a rigorous approach to your architectural modeling accuracy and detail. We systematically guide you through a meticulous process ensuring every single detail is captured with precision to achieve photo-realism in your Lumion renders that distinguishes professional visualization work in competitive markets.

Using our preferred high-quality texture resource, poliigon.com, we systematically adopt a rigorous approach to replacing all standard materials within Lumion with sophisticated 4K resolution replacements that achieve unprecedented material authenticity. When you complete this comprehensive lesson, the scene achieves remarkable realism even within the Lumion 2023 editor viewport, demonstrating the power of advanced material workflows.

A critical aspect of achieving exceptional realism in your architectural scenes involves meticulously perfecting the lighting design using both the Lumion sun system and real skies for authentic environmental illumination. We then advance into professional photography techniques including strategic fill lights positioned behind the camera and within hidden parts of the model to showcase every intricate detail of each render composition.

For any close-up shot requiring exceptional detail, you need access to the absolute best in high-polygon assets that maintain quality under scrutiny. Fortunately, Lumion can import FBX files, enabling us to import virtually any type of sophisticated geometry since most 3D modeling programs can export to FBX format. In this lesson, we download a model from 3D Sky and edit/export using Autodesk 3D Studio Max to integrate an incredibly detailed Barcelona Chair into our scene.

As designers, we often want to capture comprehensive views with our camera selections, but some of the most powerful and engaging images we can create are called 'vignettes'. These are intimate close-up shots of scenes that strategically leave the viewer curious about what exists beyond and behind the camera frame. When combined with depth of field effects, these shots create exceptional levels of visual realism and emotional engagement that distinguish professional architectural visualization work.

We systematically conclude the course by making final comprehensive refinements to the architectural model, material assignments, and render settings before initiating rendering with Lumion's revolutionary Raytracing technology at maximum quality settings. After the shots are rendered, we advance into Adobe Photoshop using the Camera Raw Filter and cinematic presets to professionally finish our renders, preparing them for client delivery and professional presentation that meets contemporary visualization standards.