Architectural rendering and visualization have become crucial tools in the art of communication. From client presentations to internal design reviews, showing your 3D models in lifelike, beautiful environments can convey both practical information about the project’s development, as well as the feeling and experience of a space. From residential homes and commercial buildings to interiors and landscape designs, Lumion helps architects breathe life into their 3D models and invite others to see the beauty in their designs.

With the release of Lumion, Lumion builds on its tradition of making 3D rendering a stress-free part of architectural workflows. It’s now easier than ever to communicate residential and commercial exteriors in their richly detailed settings, cast interiors in a beautiful interplay of light and shadow, and develop living environments for landscapes and cityscapes. No matter the project you’re working on, Lumion aims to reduce the amount of effort required on your end to create beautiful renderings of your designs.

Context is a huge consideration when it comes to developing your architectural designs. In Lumion, you can quickly and easily craft stunning, detail-rich landscapes and natural-looking environments with the new fine-detail nature models. With highly realistic (and animated) trees, bushes, shrubs and other objects available in Lumion’s large built-in content library, you’ll find a wide range of options to visually enrich your scene with life. They can help you imagine the feeling of leaves fluttering in the wind or the rough texture of bark. Place one in front of a home, building or park design, and others will see how your design connects with its living environment.

With a combination of beautiful Real Skies, Sky Light daylight simulation technology, soft and fine-detail shadows, and atmospheric rain and snow, you have all the tools you need to instantly heighten the “living” look of your building designs and their surrounding context. In just a few clicks, you can give your design the blue light of a clear, sunny day, or you can present a more dramatic look with heavy shadows as thick rain clouds roll in. You can even show your designs under the marvel of a thousand shimmering stars and the northern lights undulating overhead.

When surfaces contain relief and detail, the materials and your entire design come to life. With the addition of displacement mapping to many materials in Lumion, your audience will be able to feel the grain of your chosen wood, the rough surface of bricks, the bumpy texture of gravel. Lumion also comes with 1,200+ beautiful materials (167 with displacement mapping), making it easier than ever to quickly convert the blank skeleton of your 3D model into a lively scene teeming with color, depth and feeling. Just some of the materials include 3D grasses, bricks, wood, stone, metal, glass, water and more.

Architecture is viewed by some as the intersection between humanity with the built spaces, and how people experience a building. Now, with the help of Lumion’s ever-growing models and materials library, you can make built spaces come alive. New interior objects make it easy to show your vision for the space with new seating, tables and kitchen models. Demonstrate movement and social connections with new high-quality animated people. And create compelling, visually astounding environments with the fine-detail nature models.

Need to build context, fast? Looking to create a moody interior with a captivating display of light and shadow? No matter how you envision the final look and feel of your architectural design, and no matter what you are trying to communicate, Lumion features intuitive tools and features to help you create professional images, videos and 360 panoramas, without breaking a sweat. For instance, with the paint placement tool available in Lumion, you can simply sweep your mouse like a brush across an area to place hundreds of nature objects in your project. With the OSM heightmaps feature, you can recreate the actual elevations surrounding your project, from small, gradual climbs to slopes, hills and valleys.

In addition to all these great features, Lumion is also packed with cutting-edge rendering tools such as high-quality preview, photo matching, Styles, Sky Light, and much, much more! You can learn more about Lumion and discover how to go from a 3D model to a beautiful render faster than ever before. You can watch the tutorial here.

Every building has a story, and one of the roles of an architect is to tell this story in the most compelling and attractive way possible. With the help of Lumion architectural rendering software, you can take advantage of powerful technology and intuitive features so that you can tell your building’s story in an efficient, stress-free atmosphere.