Complete Guide to Lumion

Import CAD drawings of Mies van der Rohe's SR Crown Hall into SketchUp and begin modelling the exterior. Explode the imports and align everything to the correct planes—elevations give you heights, sections help with internal elements. Set up layers (now called tags in SketchUp) and group everything properly for clean organisation.

Complete the exterior model with roof capping (75mm edge with 50mm offset for shadow gap), balustrade, and front stairs. Turn profiles off to speed up performance. The lesson covers efficient SketchUp techniques—push/pull, offset, component creation—while building out the site context that will frame the renders.

Import the SketchUp model into Lumion using plain environment, position at origin and lift off the ground plane to avoid conflicts. Apply basic materials—aluminium for black metal with weathering and 0.1 bevelled edges for realism. Lumion auto-assigns glass. Set up camera angles against reference images and produce first exterior renders.

Add interior elements that enhance exterior shots—ceiling lights and ventilation grills modelled using component workflow (one quadrant copied four times). Improve tree quality to match reference images with larger specimens. Source bespoke textures from Poliigon. The lesson emphasises detail work that lifts render quality without overcomplicating the model.

Develop interior modelling with steel trim on stair edges (10mm push) and 180mm step heights. Work with split-screen reference images. The lesson philosophy: stay patient with visualisations—they don't look great straight away. Keep adding detail and refining lighting, and quality will come.

Since SR Crown Hall is a College of Architecture building, populate desks with architecture school props. Download iconic building models from 3D Warehouse—Villa Savoye, Barcelona Pavilion, Seagram Building—apply cardboard texture from Poliigon for laser-cut model effect. Add Hadid and Ando books, glue guns, scalpels. Six desk variations distributed using unique components.

Quality critique before final renders. Key rule: never use pure white or pure black—grey off the desks slightly. Fix clumsy backgrounds. Preview reflections by running build mode with effects on (slower but useful for nailing settings). Small refinements that separate good renders from great ones.

Explore Lumion's render presets—realistic, sketchy, and others are just different starting points. Use real skies and rotate them for drama. Add foreground blur with depth of field, apply sharpen slider. Each camera angle gets different presets depending on the mood you want. Test speed ray for reflections.

Photoshop post-production with three render passes: lighting, specular/reflection, and beauty pass. Drag lighting pass into beauty with shift-snap, desaturate, add brightness/contrast. Flick through blend modes—overlay and multiply work well. Use 50% opacity and masking to control where effects apply.

Create Lumion animations with keyframes. Camera height at 1.39m for eye level. Turn off ease in/out for steadier cameras that work better with video editing transitions. Animate people walking paths, pan cameras across the building. Render times are remarkably fast—practical for real production work.