Getting Started with Lumion 3D

I was contacted by Packt Publishing and asked if I would like to review Getting Started with Lumion 3D by Ciro Cardoso. I have to admit that before I even answered, I had to go Google Lumion and find out what it actually was. So for those of you who don’t know either, Lumion’s primary focus is making architectural visualizations, whether you are creating a still image or an animation. There are landscaping tools as well as a library of models to populate your project. Keep in mind, this is NOT a modeling program. You will have to model your building, house or room in a another program and import it into Lumion.It sounded interesting enough, that I agreed to do the review even though I had zero experience or practical knowledge of the program. Which worked out, since the book is a “getting started” type of book. So I downloaded the free (evaluation) version of Lumion and started reading.After a brief introduction to Lumion that explained what Lumion was, why you would want to use it and a brief tour of the opening interface, Ciro guides you through a quick tutorial/tour of Lumion and it’s tools. One of the first things you learn how to do is import a model of a house. You can model one of your own in your favorite program or like me, go to Sketchup’s website and download a house of your choice. By the end of the tutorial you will have done a bit of landscaping, applied a few materials and populated the scene with various trees, flowers and other objects.Over the next several chapters, Ciro quickly covers preparing your models for import into Lumion, materials, proper file formats for use with Lumion, various ways to build an environment, composition and post production. Ciro’s writing style was easy to follow and I achieved similar results with little problem.Lumion seems fairly intuitive and Ciro does cover most everything you would need to know to get started, but it did feel to me as if the book was more of an overview of how Lumion worked than a starter guide to Lumion. I will say though that having no experience with Lumion and it’s full capabilities, that maybe an overview is all that is really needed to start producing quick architectural visualizations with Lumion.

[...]Firstly, before reading the book you should know who exactly this software is for, it is basically for those who'd like to create architectural visualizations, don't expect this book will help you create 3D animations or stuff similar to Maya/Blender. You should be having your 3D models & Lumion helps you to add natural elements like the clouds, water, people etc so that we can give the architectural demo to clients.This book though doesn't require you to have prior knowledge, as I did not have much 3d modelling exposure so I downloaded some free 3d models & started off, this book in the initial chapters let you apply environments, landscaping & adding trees, flowers etc. which was interesting & they are a lot of parameters which you can brainstorm upon to get the desired result. If you have prior experience of any 3d modeling software you'll find the interface easy to use. The writing was easy to follow, will probably update the rest of the review once I'm done with the book.

Lumion is an extremely intuitive, easy to use architectural visualisation software. It is really fun to use - like a game. But under the hood it is a very powerful tool. And the book of Ciro Cardoso helps to discover that power step by step. It covers all the basic things about Lumion, so you can start reading it with no experience with this software. Nevertheless what is the most important for me, the book shows many small details which could be meaningful in everyday work with Lumion, such as: importing pipeline settings, shortcut keys etc.The only thing I would add to this book is a link to the Lumion's official forum, which is constantly being created by very helpful Lumion's users.Summarising, I recommend this book to everybody who wants to start their adventure with the professional architectural visualisation.

Great book for getting started. Definitely one for your book shelf!

Demasiado básico, encontrar en internet a base de tutoriales la misma información que nos aporta este libro no es nada difícil.