5 Levels of Interior Rendering

What's happening ladies and gentlemen, this is Minh from Architecture Inspirations. Today I'm going to show you the 5 levels of interior renderings in Lumia. Let's get started. For this level, users will just import their 3D models and go straight to the photo mode to render. This will most likely be for those users who don't have much time to spend on renders and just want some quick mockups of their design. Even at this level, Lumion is still very useful for creating quick renders. At level 2, you can quickly improve the quality of your scene by upgrading the materials of the imported objects by using Lumion Materials Library. Just go to the material tab and click on the surface of an object. Now you can choose any material in the library and just do this for the rest of the objects in your scene and you can see that the scene already looks a lot better. As for the render, you can easily improve it by using Lumion Styles which are basically presets built with different effects. So with one click, you can change the look of your render. There are lots of different styles that you can use, you can also make some quick changes such as the real sky background and its position. For this scene, I will keep it as a daytime render. Level 3 Now that we're in level 3, I will show you the importance of composition. So let's adjust the camera angle a bit. First, I will increase the focal length so that the camera angle is not too wide. You can also double click the slider and type in a specific value like so. Next we need to make sure the verticals are straight up and down so I can click this button to align the camera parallel to the ground. Now we can move it to a good position like so and click here to update the view. There we go, even just changing the camera angle can make a huge difference. Next, let's use the Lumion Asset Library to populate our scene with some decorations. For this scene, I will add some lamps on both sides of the sofa. Here I can hold R to rotate the lamp before I place it. This makes it really easy to position objects before placing them. Some objects in the Lumion library can be colorized like this lamp. Just select it and change the color here. Next, let's add some shelves on the right wall here. Then we can place some books on them like so. And you can add anything you want. I'll also add some cushions on the sofa. You can easily look for specific items using the search bar here. After adding objects, you can use the different tools here to move and rotate the objects to the perfect positions. I'll make these cushions black as well to match our theme. Next, I'll add some paintings on the left and I'll have them lean on the wall like so. And on the right wall, I'll add a fireplace behind these chairs. Finally, I'll place some miscellaneous items on this coffee table such as a vase, a pair of glasses, a magazine, and maybe a seashell for decoration. You can decorate your scene however you like. And as you can see, by adding objects to your scene, you can make it look like a cozy space that has been occupied which makes it more realistic. Similar to the foreground and any other parts of our scene, the background is also very important. Here I'm using the Mask Placement tool to add some trees. This will help me quickly place multiple types of trees at once. Then I'll add some grass patches with the paint tool as well. And I'll use Define Detail Nature Asset for the trees that are close to the window so it looks better. As you can see, adding some trees outside the window can provide some context for the viewer and make the render more realistic. Level 4 For level 4, you need a true understanding of how Lumen's styles and effects can change the look of your render. A user who truly understands what each of these effects does will be able to create renders that stand out among the rest. For example, I will go to Hyper Light and increase the brightness to max. As you can see, turning off this effect will increase the number of calculated light bounces in the scene and will help brighten up the interior more. Next, I will go to Skylight and change the Render Quality to Ultra. And I'll also turn on these two switches so that the skylight affects both planar and projected reflections. As you can see, this affects softness and disperses the scene's environmental lighting which makes the lighting more accurate and greatly improves our render. Now let's go to the Shadow effect and increase the Omni Shadow to max. This will add more ambient occlusion to your scene so the cracks and crevices in your model will become darker. Although it is very subtle, I can still add some contrast to your render and make it look better. Finally, I'll go to Reflection. To add reflection planes, click on Edit. Now I can click this plus button and choose a surface. Then I can change the Preview Quality here. And there we go, with the reflection effect, our reflections in the windows look way more realistic. For interior scenes like this one, the change can be very subtle but it still makes it look better. However, if you add reflection planes to other surfaces like this table here, then you can see a huge difference. Remember when creating multiple views in your project, you can copy and paste effects with these options here. And you can also save the effects to a file so you can load them in for future uses. Finally, Level 5. We can start it off by making some changes to our materials to make them look even better. First is by using custom PBR materials. Besides using materials in the Lumion library, you can also create your own custom materials by importing PBR maps like color maps, normal maps, and even displacement maps. There we go, the ladder looks way more realistic now. I'll do the same for the wood flooring too. When adding custom materials, you can adjust the size of the map here and change the orientation of the texture in the advanced settings. There are also other cool materials such as fur material which is useful for objects such as rugs. Lumion has very good presets that you can use, but you can also import your own color map if you like. I usually like to delete the normal map that comes with my color map so that it reverts to the built-in normal map. This way, the fur material can still have the original pattern like so, which looks really good. Another cool feature that I like to use is the weathering feature. This will add some wear and tear to the selected material, but I don't want to turn it up too high because it will start to look really rustic. Just make it enough so that it adds some imperfections and this will add another level of realism to your materials. The next topic I want to talk about is the atmosphere and ambience of a scene. For example, the precipitation effect is very useful for adding snow and rain to your render. Just adjust the sliders until you like what you see. You can add fog here as well. Here it got a bit darker, so I can just change the exposure to make it a bit brighter. That looks good. There's also a cool effect that lets you change the color of the leaves in your scene. Brownish-orange colored leaves might be a better fit for this winter scene. Sometimes it's the small detail that makes a difference. With the precipitation effect, you can easily switch between snow and rain with a single slider. Similar to the snow effect, you can change the fog amount, and you can change the faces, particle quantity, and size. And of course, we can always change the real sky's background to a different one that's more suited for a rainy day. In Lumion 11, there's also a new option which allows you to add rain streaks to the windows on your building to create a really moody rainy scene. Pretty cool huh? To add a bit more to the ambience of the rainy and snowy scene, we can use the new Volumetric Fire asset. Just place it in the scene, and position it appropriately. In here, you can change the width, length, height, and even turbulence and intensity. For detailed shots like this, I like to use the Depth of Field effect to blur out the background and foreground a bit. This really helps control the viewer's focus and make the render more artistic. And finally, the last thing I like to do is to use color correction to make some final adjustments. Also, sometimes I like to use the Analog effect to stylize my render to give it more personality. And one bonus tip is to have fun and be creative. Lumion is really amazing, so feel free to explore and experiment with its assets and features. For example, here I'm using a vase asset, and then I'll add a fine detail nature plant on top of it to create a completely new indoor plant object. Pretty cool huh? And those are the five levels of interior renderings in Lumion. Leave a like if you enjoyed the video, and comment below and let me know which level you're at and if you have any cool tips to share. That's all for today, stay spy guys, and I'll see you next time.