Act-3D releases Lumion 6.3
Originally posted on 4 November 2015. Scroll down for details of the Lumion 6.3 release.
Act-3D has released Lumion 6, the latest version of its real-time visualisation software, improving rendering quality, boosting performance, and adding a number of new stock assets.
The release follows hard on the heels of rival visualisation tool Twinmotion 2016, which also shipped this week.
Improvements to indirect lighting, ambient occlusion and depth of field
Act-3D describes the release as “taking Lumion to the next level” – and indeed, a lot of the main new features constitute fairly major changes to the software’s render engine.
The Hyperlight indirect lighting system introduced in Lumion 5 gets an update, and now calculates surface lighting “eight times more accurately”, improving visible detail at short distances.
There is also a new ‘OmniShadow’ system – essentially ambient occlusion to HyperLight’s global illumination, to judge from the demo video – and Speedray for generating reflections.
Depth of field has been enhanced with support for bokeh effects and dynamic focus during animations.
Performance has also been improved: Act-3D claims that Lumion 6 renders “up to 11%” faster than Lumion 5.7, the previous public release.
Preset-based systems for glass, wet asphalt and styrofoam
A number of other changes provide presets for real-world architectural materials.
The new PureGlass system mimics a range of glass colours and surface finishes, and there is also a new preset wet asphalt material and a styrofoam effect mimicking the look of traditional architectural maquettes.
In addition, there are new slider-controlled effects for animated coloured spotlights and autumn vegetation; and the Mass Move effect added in Lumion 5 for animated crowds or traffic now supports curved motion paths.
The update also adds a range of new stock assets, including 20 new animated 3D people from AXYZ design, a range of animated human 2D silhouettes, 135 new 3D trees, and 77 other new 3D plants.
Updated 6 April 2016: Act-3D has released Lumion 6.3, a free update to the software that adds support for generating stereoscopic output viewable on the Oculus Rift and Gear VR headsets.
The update also adds a range of preset filters and effects that can be added to VR content or panoramic images shared via MyLumion.com, Act-3D’s new work-in-progress online portfolio site.
Pricing and availability
Lumion 6.3 is available now for 64-bit Windows Vista and above.
The Pro edition of the software costs €2,999 (around $3,270); the standard edition, which lacks Hyperlight, Speedray, PureGlass and some stock content, costs €1,499 ($1,640). You can see a comparison table here.
Read a full list of the new features in Lumion 6 and 6.3 (Includes more demo videos)