September 29, 2024

Lumion 2024.3 brings new city-themed exterior Objects to the Lumion Library as well as some additional new features and improvements.

Important: To install the changes, Lumion 2024 needs to be updated. Please follow the instructions in the Lumion pop-up window and see the article below for additional information: 

• Knowledge Base:  How does the Updater for Lumion work?

For background information, also consult:

• Knowledge Base:  Lumion 2024.0: Release Notes
• Knowledge Base:  Lumion 2024: Update to 24.1.0 - Release Notes
• Knowledge Base:  Lumion 2024: Update to 24.2.0 - Release Notes
• Knowledge Base:  Transitions from prior versions to using Lumion 2024

1. New Content in the Library:

The Lumion Library has been expanded with new Objects and Materials. This update's overarching theme is city and outdoor - new buildings, streetlights, fences, and various other construction and urban elements, including new stylized assets have been added.

In this release, there's also a new Objects sub-category: Backdrops.

These are large cylindrical Objects with city skylines, forests, mountains, and other background imagery, ideal for quickly filling in the surroundings of your Projects.

Note: New content can be filtered by typing L24.3 or 24.3 in the Search bar and is marked with a blue dot:

1.1: New Content breakdown

A full list of all the new Objects is published in the article below:

• Knowledge Base: What is the new content added in Lumion 2024?

And on the Lumion Website:

• Lumion Website: What's new in Lumion 2024.3

2. New Features:

2.1. Import Lights

Lumion now supports importing Spotlights and Omnilights directly from the CAD program. For a more detailed guide on how this works, follow the article below:

• Knowledge Base: How do you import Lights from your CAD software?

3. Improvements:

3.1: Improved Paint Placement

Paint Placement has been overhauled and now lets you place multiple different models at once, similar to Line Placement and the recently updated Cluster Placement.

A selection pool of up to 20 different models is supported together with adjusting the Brush Size and toggling Conform to Landscape.

Doing a brush stroke with a high Brush Size and Density can result in an extremely large number of models being placed at once, so to prevent this, Lumion will limit the number of items placed per frame: 

Eraser Mode now also has an Eraser Size and Strength for more flexibility. Erasing now will also delete any other Nature elements in the active Layer, not only items placed in the current Paint Placement session. 

Note: Paint Placement is still only available in the nature category.

3.2: Performance Improvements

Lumion 2024.3 got a performance improvement, mostly noticeable in Build Mode and on the raster Preview in Photo, Movie, and Panorama Modes on large complex scenes that have Imported Models with many surfaces and Materials. Improved rendering times can also be noticed when using rasterization.

3.3: Improved Clip Plane Object

The Clip Plane Object now has a toggle that flips the plane, which makes it easier to select a side to Clip as opposed to having to rotate it manually. 

3.4: Improved Blueprint Effect

The BluePrint Effect has a new property slider (Grid Rotation) which allows for setting the horizontal orientation of the grid.

4. Resolved issues and other improvements:

Build Mode:

• Gizmo: Moving an Object with the Gizmo now updates the Landscape Height as expected.
• Move Object: The move distance is now displayed when moving an Object with the Gizmos in XZ, XY, and XZ space.
• Line/Cluster/Paint Placement: The 20th Object of the selection now displays the delete button.
• Line/Cluster/Paint Placement: A message box “Select an Item from the Library” has been added when the selection is empty.
• Line/Cluster/Paint Placement: The text box is larger and improved to fit on one line when no Object has been selected yet.
• Line/Cluster placement: No Object will be displayed until a selection is made.
• Line Placement: The Straight / Smooth setting that was used on the previous Line Placement is now maintained.
• Cluster placement: Objects placed when toggling “Conform to Ground” are now correctly displayed and can be used by the Gizmo .
• Paint Placement: The cursor no longer goes on top of Nature Objects when painting, making it much easier to place/delete them.
• Paint Placement: The maximum Density has been adjusted from 150% to 100%.
• Paint Placement: Added a hotkey L to increase/decrease the Brush size and B to switch between Paint and Erase (and vice-versa).
• Paint Placement: The correct number of Trees is now displayed in the Performance Monitor.
• Select all Objects in the same category: was renamed to “ Select all similar Objects ” and improved to select Objects that relate to the current selection.
• Landscape: Raised Landscape no longer disappears when rotating the camera upward.
• Landscape → Paint height: Raise Landscape behavior has been reverted to the same as in Lumion 2024.2.
• Performance: Editor performance is improved when working on scenes with Imported Models that have a high number of surfaces.
• Nature Objects: Nature Objects no longer lose their leaves/needles.
• Undo: Deleting Objects will now be restored as expected.
• OpenStreetMap: Clip Plane Objects now take the OpenStreetMap Orientation into
  consideration.

Materials:

• Standard PBR material → Map scale → Custom: Offsetting a texture on the Y-axis by 100% now works as expected when using non-square portrait textures.
• Standard PBR material → Weathering: The Iron, Copper, and Plastic Weathering presets no longer remove the metallic appearance of the Material.

Photo, Movie, and Panorama Modes:

• Near Clip Plane Effect: The Near Clip Plane is applied to the reflection cubemap if the Reflection Control Object hasn’t been manually placed in the scene.
• Phasing Effect: Using the pop-up transition when the playback was set before the animation started on the timeline, light Objects Orientation will be maintained and no longer reset to 0,0,0. 
• Phasing Effect: The bounding boxes in the “Select Objects” screen have been removed.
• Ray Tracing Effect: Materials with Opacity lower than 100% are now rendered as expected above the horizon when the Denoiser is disabled.
• Ray Tracing Effect: The hex tiling function now longer produces pixelated results in Ray Traced reflections.
• Advanced Move Effect: Advanced Move Keyframes now save as expected when certain Groups are present in the scene.
• Material ID Additional Output: Surfaces from the same model that had Grass, Ivy, Fur or Water/Waterfall Materials now appear as different colors in the Material ID output.

Import/Export

• Imported Animations: The import times and file size for complex animated Imported Models have been improved.
• Batch Import: The batch import UI now displays the selected models as expected in the list when importing from a root directory. E.g. from “D:\”. The folder name is also now used as prefix.
• Batch Import: When importing exactly 2 models from a root directory, the batch import UI is now used instead of single model import UI.
• Import → .OBJ: now import as expected (scale-wise) across all recent Lumion versions (2023.2 and newer).
• Import → .FBX: Importing complex .FBX models with many textures and Materials should no longer cause a "Lumion ran out of memory" error if the machine has enough memory available.
• SketchUp: Models imported or LiveSynced with SketchUp 24 should no longer display wrong texture scale.

Save, Load, Merge, and Project file recovery:

• File Path: Lumion now opens Windows Explorer at the last loaded file’s path in certain situations. E.g. when saving a Project.

Miscellaneous:

• Example Scenes: Clips in the example scenes now have Fully Ray Traced Glass disabled.
• Example Scenes: Removed the Ray Tracing Effect from Panoramas.
• Terms of agreement: The text is now visible at all times.
• Tutorials: AZERTY keyboards are now supported.
• Tutorials: Various improvements.
• UI: Various improvements.
• Help Overlay: It will now show the keyboard control schemes for Revit, Rhino and SketchUp.

See Also:

• Knowledge Base:  Lumion 2024.0: Release Notes