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Author Topic: exe publishing, lumion viewer  (Read 5513 times)

Member877

    Reputation: 32
exe publishing, lumion viewer
« on: September 13, 2011, 03:27:58 pm »
September 13, 2011, 03:27:58 pm
will exe publishing, or a lumion viewer be part of lumion 2.0 ?

this is very important to me, because i want to sell a very large modell to a client.
they want to use this for descissions in future planning and definitely need an viewer for it.

best regards
stucki


Member909

    Reputation: 4
Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #1 on: September 13, 2011, 04:33:54 pm »
September 13, 2011, 04:33:54 pm
They guys says that the viewer will be available at the end of the year, as I stressed them a lot about that :P

But the main problem here is this: is better to have a nice, full of feature, ready to use video, or the most important thing is to give the project (in .exe ) to the customer?

Thinking about that Lumion is a great tool, but it does require a pretty good graphic card to run properly, so if you want to send the .exe to your customer theres no way he can easily fly around the scene if he doesn't have a good graphic card, much worse if he runs a laptop...
And beside that, shadows are with aliasing, trees moves not that smooth, and lots of other stuff that can be achieved only thru rendering the video...

Anyway it will be a really nice feature to have, but I would rather postpone it for a "game-like" viewer, such as collision, ability to have a character that moves around, and so on...

Member877

    Reputation: 32
Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #2 on: September 14, 2011, 09:04:01 am »
September 14, 2011, 09:04:01 am
thanks for the info.
i am aware of the hardware cost of the viewer. that shouldnt be an issue with this customer.
but i can only sell this project if there will definitely be a viewer.

so i still need an official statement from the lumion team.

Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #3 on: September 14, 2011, 11:22:25 am »
September 14, 2011, 11:22:25 am
They guys says that the viewer will be available at the end of the year, as I stressed them a lot about that :P

But the main problem here is this: is better to have a nice, full of feature, ready to use video, or the most important thing is to give the project (in .exe ) to the customer?

Thinking about that Lumion is a great tool, but it does require a pretty good graphic card to run properly, so if you want to send the .exe to your customer theres no way he can easily fly around the scene if he doesn't have a good graphic card, much worse if he runs a laptop...
And beside that, shadows are with aliasing, trees moves not that smooth, and lots of other stuff that can be achieved only thru rendering the video...

Anyway it will be a really nice feature to have, but I would rather postpone it for a "game-like" viewer, such as collision, ability to have a character that moves around, and so on...

That's not really correct because there won't be a viewer. Initially we had some ideas to release something like exe output and we even made some prototypes but we decided it's not really a good way send a model to others. There's issues with file size, issues with content licenses and there's the issue of compatibility an a huge number of variables to ruin the experience.

The real question here is how you can bring your interactive presentation to clients. We have 10 years of experience with exe publishing so we know what the limitations are. As you mentioned in your post the experience is often ruined because the client does not have a PC with a good GPU or he does not have a PC at all.

There are people with Mac's out there and increasingly people will be using other devices like phones and tablets. We think an exe file simply is not enough.

We will release a version of Quest3D soon which contains many of the rendering features of Lumion and it allows publishing, customization of exe files. We're really trying hard to create an experience similar to Lumion. So, we strive to have the same sky, tone mapping, importing system, flares, materials as Lumion but it has source code so you can customize everything and you can export everything to an exe. The way we made it is you just fire up the framework and you can place 3D models. I think we should make it so if you hit the publish button at that point you'll have an exe of that state of the project. A simple "ineditor" check can be added to hide all the GUI for the client.

For Lumion we will make sure we'll provide a great solution for sending out interactive experiences to customers but we'll only go ahead with a solution that works better than just a simple exe file.

Another thing that came up, although not confirmed, was to give you the ability to package a scene from Lumion into a single file. We could alter the Free version so you can double click these files and view the model in a presentation mode so you won't be able to edit them. Essentially this makes the free version the viewer. The drawback ofcourse is that some of the models won't be included in the presentations since they are part of the full Lumion library.

Member877

    Reputation: 32
Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #4 on: September 14, 2011, 12:12:54 pm »
September 14, 2011, 12:12:54 pm
why not just release a theatre mode only version of lumion (but with full content) with a simple load option.
that would be enough for me and my customers.

but it would be very interesting what other solution you have in mind ....






Member909

    Reputation: 4
Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #5 on: September 14, 2011, 12:42:45 pm »
September 14, 2011, 12:42:45 pm
Is a very good news to see that you're taking into account even Mac and other devices ( Tablet/Smartphones ) because nowdays they're becoming the quickest way to check everything and lots of developers made a specific versions for mobile game engines

I remember you talkin' about the free version to be used as a viewer, that for now can really be an easy and quick solution for who wants this possibility now available, but still there's the content problem...

Main problems are:
- If it will be a single packaged file, the main problem will be to send the package itself, since it will be quite big
- Pain in the arse for the customer to download the package
- Pain in the arse for the customer to install the package ( both installing troubleshoot and admin privileges...yes, that is something to take care of... )
- Good PC configuration to run Lumion viewer properly ( that, I suppose, will be the same specs to run the "normal" Lumion, since the features are the same )

I don't know, but previously for me the .exe was the only thing that concerned me from buying Lumion, but now, checking on my customers needs, I see that a "simple" movie created with a 3D software is enough, but most of them look at the details ( indirect illumination with correct light values, reflections, amount of lights needed for night-time ) and so on...that is why I'm using Lumion ( free ) just for prototyping and not for the final render ( unfortunately  :( )

Has been a while since the "EXE" discussion started, so I'm wondering what is the situation right now about that, but I'm sure that you'll come up with something good and not so painfull to send/use :)

Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #6 on: September 14, 2011, 01:49:06 pm »
September 14, 2011, 01:49:06 pm
Is a very good news to see that you're taking into account even Mac and other devices ( Tablet/Smartphones ) because nowdays they're becoming the quickest way to check everything and lots of developers made a specific versions for mobile game engines

I remember you talkin' about the free version to be used as a viewer, that for now can really be an easy and quick solution for who wants this possibility now available, but still there's the content problem...

Main problems are:
- If it will be a single packaged file, the main problem will be to send the package itself, since it will be quite big
- Pain in the arse for the customer to download the package
- Pain in the arse for the customer to install the package ( both installing troubleshoot and admin privileges...yes, that is something to take care of... )
- Good PC configuration to run Lumion viewer properly ( that, I suppose, will be the same specs to run the "normal" Lumion, since the features are the same )

I don't know, but previously for me the .exe was the only thing that concerned me from buying Lumion, but now, checking on my customers needs, I see that a "simple" movie created with a 3D software is enough, but most of them look at the details ( indirect illumination with correct light values, reflections, amount of lights needed for night-time ) and so on...that is why I'm using Lumion ( free ) just for prototyping and not for the final render ( unfortunately  :( )

Has been a while since the "EXE" discussion started, so I'm wondering what is the situation right now about that, but I'm sure that you'll come up with something good and not so painfull to send/use :)

All the issues you describe are never solvable for an exe export feature so that's why we prefer looking for another way to avoid those issue. The trick is to think out of the box and come up with ways to present designs as good as possible.

We can always create a way to view Lumion project without the viewer having to purchase Lumion. Lumion is not really focussed on collaboration right now so it's hard to share and distribute your projects. These are all practical issues which are easy to solve. A package export combined with the free version being able to view these packages would do the job.

Member2870

    Reputation: 7
Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #7 on: September 14, 2011, 02:06:30 pm »
September 14, 2011, 02:06:30 pm
Good morning, guys!
Regarding this issue about the exe files, i have a opinion that in the first instance, i see the exe files running on machines in stands at shopping centers, at real state office desks, construction fairs, etc (many clients of mine have the same expectation, because they are specialized in selling bigger ventures)... running at good machines, with three or four graphic cards (for a company intending to build a huge project, who will spend millions of dollars to do that, a few good GPU cards would not be the problem...the same for the real state brokers, they gain a lot of money working with ours projects)...
In a second moment, i see the exe files running minor projects in home computers with GPU´s that are continually evolving...
And in a future, not to far i suppose, bigger projects will be able to be visualized in, quite normal home computers...
The professionals that work with huge projects, have to bare in mind  that the visualization of their projects in real time is a miracle ( i´m exagerating little bit, of course) at current time (all thanks to Lumion, and other - not so good - applications) and they have to wait a little bit more to share with the common costumers, all that wonder.   :-)
Good day for you all!!
Fábio


Re: exe publishing, lumion viewer
« Reply #8 on: September 14, 2011, 04:00:42 pm »
September 14, 2011, 04:00:42 pm
Good morning, guys!
Regarding this issue about the exe files, i have a opinion that in the first instance, i see the exe files running on machines in stands at shopping centers, at real state office desks, construction fairs, etc (many clients of mine have the same expectation, because they are specialized in selling bigger ventures)... running at good machines, with three or four graphic cards (for a company intending to build a huge project, who will spend millions of dollars to do that, a few good GPU cards would not be the problem...the same for the real state brokers, they gain a lot of money working with ours projects)...
In a second moment, i see the exe files running minor projects in home computers with GPU´s that are continually evolving...
And in a future, not to far i suppose, bigger projects will be able to be visualized in, quite normal home computers...
The professionals that work with huge projects, have to bare in mind  that the visualization of their projects in real time is a miracle ( i´m exagerating little bit, of course) at current time (all thanks to Lumion, and other - not so good - applications) and they have to wait a little bit more to share with the common costumers, all that wonder.   :-)
Good day for you all!!
Fábio

Sounds reasonable. ... and that's exactly the kind of thing we want Quest3D be used for. In Quest3D you can add your own GUI, program structure and add all kinds of interactive features. Quest3D is especially good for creating dedicated presentations that run at high performance. We'll also have the Speedtree library available and maybe we can even throw in the rest of the Lumion content library. Essentially you would get a customizable open source version of the build section which allows you to publish to an exe. For now not all features are included but it is close (no special fx/water).