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Transitions from prior versions to using Lumion 2025

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TOPICS:

For the roadmap of Lumion, please visit:

1. From Lumion 2024.0 to Lumion 2025.0 and New to Lumion 2025.

2. From versions before Lumion 2023 through to Lumion 2025.

3. Understanding the Changes.

4. Continuous development cycle.

5. Improvements - highlights.

6. Feature Changes.

7. Update on Technical Limitations.

 

Guide to working with the changes from your version of Lumion

The product range now offered for Lumion is a significant change.  Existing Lumion Pro users are upgraded with access to Lumion View as part of the revised product offering of Lumion Studio.  Lumion Standard users move to the fully featured Lumion Studio as well.  

Lumion View is commercially released at the same time as Lumion Pro/Studio.

8K rendering for Photos returns and we look forward to further enhancements to ensure the level of quality from AI Upscaling can reach your expectations.

Whilst not all Effects, content and assets have yet been fully converted (where needed) to the Ray Trace rendering pipeline, Lumion 2025.0 sees the implementation of two great Ray Tracing features.

Performance is always part of the mix of considerations for the developers.  Especially as demands grow for more quality and detail in visualizations.  The introduction of new file formats will have an immediate benefit from faster and smaller file sizes, with further plans for getting the best performance for your Projects.

Performance and quality improvements for the real time rendering environment has driven the first implementation of Radiance Caching for real time Ray Tracing and with its quality advantages, further moves Lumion to the next level for Ray Trace rendering.

Product and License management sees the introduction of Named-User based Login and Accounts. Something long asked for by, and well suited to, customers with a need for more flexible access to support a larger pool of staff to use Lumion.

 

1. From Lumion 2024.0 to Lumion 2025.0 and New to Lumion 2025:

For Ray Trace rendering:

Lumion 2024.0 advanced the capability to use Ray Tracing much more in Movie Mode for animations by implementing a high performance neural Denoiser, multiple sampling techniques and improving light distribution to produce a higher accuracy result.

The changes result in improved ability to use Ray Tracing as part of your rendering workflows:

For Photos and Clips: editing and preparing them before final render get much better due to real time improvements in the Preview window - both for FPS performance and for quality.  This aspect is also part of an upgrade path flowing into Lumion 2025 (re: Radiance Cache system).

For Photos:  improved quality compared to Lumion 2023.

For Movie animations: significant in terms of render timeframes as well as quality.  Noting though that there still may be a need to render using the Rasterization rendering option for fastest possible outcomes (Project dependent).

 

The following Ray Traced Clip was rendered with 1 Sample in under 2 minutes (Full HD, 30 FPS) using an RTX 3090 graphics card:

Including: 

  • Real-time temporal Denoising in the Preview window (Photo Mode and Movie Mode) using NRD.  NRD refers to NVIDIA's Real-Time Denoisers - ReLAX and ReBLUR).
  • Render time temporal Denoising for Movies using NRD.
  • Rendering quality/performance subsystem: Multiple Importance Sampling (MIS).
  • Fully Ray-Traced Glass. New, advanced Fully Ray Traced Glass: supports refraction (IOR), emulated glass depth, absorption, colored light and shadow transmittal, etc.
  • Fully Ray-Traced Nature.  All Nature Objects have been converted are now in the bindless pipeline and can be rendered with Ray Trace rendering as well as Rasterization.

NRDNavigation.gif

 

Additional features and improvements included in Lumion 2024:

  • Parallax Interiors.
  • Improved Landscape Tiling.
  • Ray Traced Subsurface Scattering.
  • Batch Import.
  • glTF Compatibility.
  • New Camera Controls.
  • New Content.

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Additional features and improvements were included throughout Lumion 2024:

  • Implementation of fully Ray Traced Landscape Grass.
  • Local space Gizmo.
  • Further New Content in three Updates.
  • Sun disk size for softer shadows for Ray Tracing.
  • Improvements to the Material Library preview.
  • Import of Lights from certain CAD or file formats.
  • Improved Paint Placement.
  • Performance Improvements and improved resource management.
  • Improved Clip Plane Object.
  • Improved Blueprint Effect.
  • New Effect - Remove Background.
  • Quad HD Resolution rendering for Photo Mode.

Overall the state of improvements ready for the next version - Lumion 2025 saw features and capability improvements to help you both create and build your Scenes, but also render them at higher levels of quality, in shorter timeframes.

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There are however still some Effects, materials and content yet to also be fully included in the Ray trace rendering pipeline. 

Some of the materials (for example: 3D Grass and Foliage) we know were planned to be done for Lumion 2024 however the complexity and impacts on performance possible have resulted in further developments needed before any release.

See Section 7 for the update on Technical Limitations.

 

And for all that's new for moving from Lumion 2024 to 2025.0:

 

2. From versions before Lumion 2023 through to Lumion 2025:

Massive and important changes occurred in Lumion 2023 that saw the introduction of a Ray Trace rendering engine (using Path Tracing) along with a rewritten Material System fully supporting PBR (Physically Based Rendering) materials, and an integrated Lighting System.

 

This introduction to Ray Tracing also continued your use and experience of the Rasterization rendering pipeline.  So you can pick up from wherever you were.  Noting though, three key changes needed to support the implementation of Ray Tracing:-  a new Lighting System, new Materials System fully supporting PBR, including editors and new Material Types for the Standard Material, Glass in Lumion 2024 and water in Lumion 2025.

We've summarized the key changes up to Lumion 2023 here:

Then see the guide to helping you understand the changes for Lumion 2024 here:

Then:

From Lumion 2023 to Lumion 2024:

See the guide to helping you understand the changes for Lumion 2024 here:

Then the section above: From Lumion 2024 to Lumion 2025.

 

3. Understanding the Changes:

Lumion continues the full featured Rasterization rendering approach or using the full Ray Trace rendering using Path Tracing approach.  You choose which best suits any Photo, Movie or 360 Panorama you want to render.

In moving from your version to Lumion 2025 we suggest understanding the changes using the above articles in Section: 1. Guide to working with the changes from your version of Lumion.

 

3.1:   You will also find it useful to work through these quick and easy to Learning Guides:

3.2: Jump right in:

  • In-Built interactive Tutorials in Lumion 2025:

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3.3: Add the Ray Tracing Effect and see how simple it can be to render with Ray Tracing:

3.4: Understand the core features for Ray Tracing:

 

3.5: And if you have already used the Lumion 2024 or 2025 Pro Trial then you are already on your way.  If not and you do not have Lumion 2025, then try it:

 

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4. Continuous development cycle:

Lumion 2025.0 is a major release but also now follows the Update cycle of improvements established with Lumion 2023.

Future updates will further enhance the software and features and include more of the content that is, as at 25.0, not yet possible to have included in the Ray Trace rendering pipeline.   

Please also refer to the Roadmap for Lumion:

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5. Improvements - highlights:

 

5.1: Improvements - highlights:  Lumion Pro/Lumion Studio

Rendering:

5.1.1:  AI Upscaling.

Lumion 2025 brings to the table a new, powerful AI Upscaler for Photo Mode that doubles the resolution of images in seconds. 

 

 5.1.2:  Real Time Preview Performance and Quality:  Radiance Cache Technology: 

Smoother and more refined lighting is added to the Real-time preview using this technique that stores and reuses computed radiance values rather than recalculating them for every ray.

A radiance cache in ray tracing is a technique used to store and reuse computed radiance values to improve rendering efficiency. Instead of recalculating light interactions for every ray, the cache allows the system to interpolate previously computed values, reducing computational cost.

5.1.2.1: Benefits

  • Performance Boost: It speeds up rendering by avoiding redundant calculations, making path tracing more feasible in real-time applications.
  • Noise Reduction: Cached radiance values help smooth out noise in global illumination, leading to cleaner images.
  • Optimized Light Transport: It allows for early termination of ray paths, reducing the number of shading operations and texture loads.
  • Better Global Illumination: It enhances indirect lighting accuracy without requiring excessive ray bounces.

5.1.2.2: Practical application

This is especially noticeable with the way that lights accumulate over time, resulting in a consistent render over time

Radiance Cache is exclusively active in the real-time preview. to improve the editor experience.

At first glance, without a direct comparison, its graphical improvements may seem subtle. However, this feature provides a significant visual boost in darker areas that receive little to no direct lighting.
Even with just one bounce, the effect gradually accumulates, resulting in a stable and consistent render over time.

In previous versions, similar conditions would often produce noticeable moving blotches, even when multiple bounces were used. With Radiance Cache, these artifacts are significantly reduced, leading to smoother and more refined lighting results.

 

Ray Trace rendering pipeline:

5.1.3:  Raytraced Water Materials.

The Water Material has now been converted fully for the ray tracing pipeline to provide a boost of realism.

 

5.1.4:  Raytraced Volumetrics: Volumetric Fog.

High-quality atmospheric renders can now be created using the new Ray-traced volumetric Effect which allows full control over all surfaces and objects that emit light.

 

Build and Performance:

5.1.4:  Scene Inspector 

Lumion 2025.0 comes with this new workflow enhancing feature, designed to increase productivity by easily locating and managing Objects in complex Projects.

While in Select Mode (available both in Build Mode and Build with FX), click the magnifying glass button at the top-left corner of the interface.

 

5.1.5:  Improved Performance Monitor.

The Lumion Title bar has been fitted with an improved speedometer that monitors the performance of the Project and displays the frames per second.

The color changes based on the FPS.

On hover, a detailed Project overview is displayed:

On clicking the speedometer, the window is expanded and displays the Editor Settings:

 

To understand the feature in-detail, visit:

 

Importing:

5.1.6: Materials and Lights Importing: as part of Lumion View

SketchUp PBR maps and Lumion View Material settings are now imported when loading an .SKP file into Lumion. Lights placed using Lumion View are also imported:

 

Under the hood:

5.1.7: New file formats

For establishing improved File Save and Load times and File Sizes.

 

5.1.8: Account and License Key Management:  Named-User based Login and Account. 

Lumion 2025 rolls out an easier-to-manage, more secure, and more affordable License type: named-user license. Lumion customers can now log into the product by using the Lumion Account credentials, thus reducing any security risks of communicating the License Key in emails.

A full guide on how it works can be found below:

 

Rendered in Lumion Pro 2025.0

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5.2: Lumion View

The release of Lumion 22025.0 also marks the point for the full commercial release of Lumion view:

All About Lumion View:

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6. Feature Changes:

Please see the following articles. 

6.1: Lumion Pro:

 

6.2: Lumion View

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All About Lumion View:

 

7. Update on Technical Limitations:

 Please refer to article:

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8. Summary:

With the enhancements in Lumion Pro, greater accessibility to the Pro features, and the introduction of Lumion View, everyone here all hope you get to make the best of Lumion and create amazing visualizations for your clients with Lumion 2025.

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