I Built a City in Lumion. This is how.

Steven the city's mayor wants to paint the world's  biggest butterfly in this neighborhood and we need   some animations renders and the possibility to  change the colors if the mayor doesn't like them   and we need all this in less than two months!  This was what my boss told me a few years ago   when i started working in the public sector  here in my city it was my first and only task   as an architect and visualizer and i needed to  solve this problem quickly So let me tell you   how we did it how we built a city in lumion in  less than two months and how the project was   built at the end so let me give you some context  of what is a city with a large percentage of   informal construction the government was trying  to formalize this part of the city by installing   aqueducts schools public buildings and  transportation systems and as a final detail   painting the houses so this goes back to  a series of place making related projects   that have been done in different parts of the  world whereby painting a neighborhood of the   community gains a new identity tracks tourism and  is transformed into a public art gallery creating   giant macro murals for the city this was not  the first time a project like this had been done   still it was the first time it was this big and  we had to be so precise that it was necessary   to map out each house in the specific color it  was going to have and it was the first time we   had to create a butterfly well since the area  already looked like a butterfly from afar   they said hey let's paint the butterfly i was  part of the bigger team composed of geographers   urbanists and other architects they all had  different software they worked in and the biggest   challenge was getting all of this information  into one rendering software the geographers   had the base information which was our whole city  mapped out in our keys with different technical   information they could give us all of this  information in a cad file and we had to find a   way to make it into a 3d model of course the first  option was to grab all this and model it house per   house still it would take an eternity to model  an entire neighborhood and in the end we would be   left with a very hefty 3d model that would crash  every few minutes we had already spent around   three weeks and we had nothing done it was  it was really frustrating and we thought   it was almost impossible until one of  the geographers from the team discovered   city engine an advanced 3d modeling software for  creating massive interactive and immersive urban   environments in less time than traditional  modeling techniques using a procedural   modeling approach city engine supports the  creation of detailed large-scale 3d city   models due to this unique feature set it has been  used in urban planning architecture visualization   game development and more in conclusion we were  about to use software to create cities for video   games for our own project now the other question  was what rendering engine could we pair this   up with which rendering program could run a heavy  file and support animations tons of renders and   many changes from one day to another well you  know this was a no-brainer for us we had decided   to use lumion for this it was the best option  if we wanted to place trees and people change   the time of day create super cool animations have  a render like quality and be super easy to use so   we decided on the following workflow first the  geographers would export model in cad version   we would open the autocad file and decide the  color of the house is and how the actual butterfly   would be painted we overlaid a little butterfly  vector and started painting in each region   we created different variations of color for this  the ones where we used primarily dark colors and   others light colors we would go into google earth  get facades from the area cut them out and paint   them with the exact colors we would get different  variations of the front with the same color then   the geographic team would send us a collateral  file with the 3d model they would create with   these color variations so we could import them  into lumion as soon as we imported the model into   lumion we would pair this with a satellite image  in high resolution we would adjust the scale of   both and start placing the assets obviously the  heaviest would be all the vegetation so i used   different tools inside of lumions where i could  place hundreds of natural objects as if i were   painting on paper one of the benefits of using  lumion was that we could set hundreds of assets   and still work smoothly on the project now if  the mayor had any modifications on the colors   we would import only the houses again but with a  different color also we could adjust the facade   maps in photoshop if we wanted to add graffiti  or change the facade or make it larger we also   use the custom decal option to import images like  graffiti's on top of houses so you would just go   into effects then go into decals then import  your custom decal and then replace the custom   decal with your image and it was super super  easy after doing this we created animations to   show how the butterfly would look from different  perspectives the volume cloud feature in lumion   helped us create some dramatic contrast showing  only the model parts not the incomplete ones since   this project is located on one of the most uh  enormous mountains in the city we had to place a   lot of trees so most of my time was spent deciding  how to make the tree placement look natural the   lumion library has been adding thousands of trees  and variations of the same tree species lately   so placing different types of pines conifers  or broadleaf trees was super easy with lumion   obviously and here are three tips for working on  large scale projects in lumion the first tip is to   organize everything in layers inside of lumion i  had to terrain in one layer the houses in another   the vegetation in another and so on and so forth  i cannot stress how important this is for a smooth   workflow inside of lumion turn the other layers  off if you're working on the only vegetation and   terrain second tip try to use lumion effects to  your advantage using the volumetric light helped   a lot in creating depth in the image also using  the tilt shift effect and aerial shots allow the   viewer's eye to focus on specific areas and hide  areas that weren't necessarily finished and being   careful in using effects such as hyperlite and  skylight because they can drastically improve   the quality of your images but they can also  make your render times increase a lot so use   it only in necessary images or lower the value  if necessary the third tip is to understand what   is going to be close to the camera and put a lot  of detail and effort into that and for the things   that are farther away try to have them in low  resolution or low poly model so this the overall   file doesn't get too heavy in this case i used  two satellite images one from google earth in low   resolution that i knew would be seen from far away  so there was no need to have large image files and   a high-res satellite image for the project area  also i placed tall grass and high quality trees   closer to the camera and generic conifers in the  rest of regions of course after we finished this   tremendous feat everyone was amazed by the quality  and realness of the images in fact everyone was so   amazed that the actual mayor said hey you should  make some renters and animations of the areas   we plan to intervene in the next few years so with  the experience we gained from creating this model   we worked on three more projects in the following  months following the same workflow the first was a   park meant to be built on the hillside of a  mountainous neighborhood on the city's periphery   here we didn't necessarily have to paint houses  so we took this opportunity to use all the assets   from lumion to create streets and street furniture  then our team also worked on an extensive public   park along with a pedestrian street here elements  like moving people features birds and vegetation   helped represent this project better for these  projects we also used revit to import the specific   urban design geometry and update any changes we  had to make finally we had to again paint more   neighborhoods but this time on a larger scale and  create entire animations from this so needless to   say the animations renders and the experience was  getting so much better each time we created a new   project although it's charming to paint houses on  a computer it's better to see how communities are   actually improved and real houses are painted in  real life so these were some of the pictures of   how all these interventions turned out in the end  and luckily enough i also had the opportunity to   paint one of these houses myself although it  was a lot harder than painting them and lumion   nonetheless i can finally consider myself not  only a digital painter but sort of a real one   too i want to thank lumion for sponsoring this  video and letting me tell this story when i was   working on these projects i thought to myself  you know how cool would it be if i could tell   how this was done and show it better and  if the team at lumion found out how we   used their software luckily i had a chance to  talk with them and they were super excited for   me to tell this story of course without lumion  this whole project would not have been possible   if you want to download lumion there will be a  link in the description and also if you want to   see more lumion tutorials click on this playlist  right here which is really cool let me know what   you thought of these projects what things i  should have done or if you would like to see   more videos like these let me know see you guys in  the following video bye let's paint the butterfly

Channel: Show It Better

Views: 252,088

Keywords: show it better, architecture tutorials, photoshop for architects, architecture videos, tutoriales de arquitectura, lumion 11, architectural visualization, architectural rendering

Id: 10HF7dy1nw8

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 16 2022