February 21, 2021 Bella

Tips to speed up Lumion performance on your low-end PC

Lumion is a powerful, easy, fun-to-use, effective architectural visualization tool that allows anyone to build a 3D environment and then create beautiful images, impressive video presentations, and live walkthroughs. It is the fastest way to pick up your 3D model and create a scene in a matter of minutes. This blog will show you the factors that affect rendering performance and how to speed it up in Lumion, therefore you can use Lumion better.

1. Graphic cards

A powerful graphics card is the most crucial component to achieve a good experience with Lumion. CPU, memory and other specs also play a role, but a good experience begins with the graphics card. Therefore, the most important factor that determines how fast you’re able to render each frame is your GPU. You can benchmark your computer in Lumion before using that PC to check how fast it will perform. If your graphics card scores in the orange or red zones, then it may not be powerful enough to get a great performance in Lumion. A high end graphics card is really important and if yours turns out to be in the orange or red zones, then we strongly recommend upgrading the NVidia Geforce series (like RTX – 30xx) to get the highest performance ratio. 

CPU is not used much while rendering still images and videos – it’s mainly used for compressing frames after they have been rendered.

Please read the post to know more about the recommended configuration for Lumion: Optimized system requirements in Lumion 11

GPU memory

It is recommended to use from or more than 8GB graphics card memory for Lumion. 

The more GPU memory, the more detailed your scene will be, so the faster 3D models, textures, and rendering will be.

System memory (RAM)

Ram plays the role of allowing large-scale scenes or models to be brought into Lumion easily when the computer has a lot of RAM. It is used when your graphics card runs out of memory while rendering complex scenes in Lumion.

Hard drive

Hard drive speed has a great impact on getting models or designing in Lumion, or how quick the file opens. Therefore, this speed is as fast as possible.

2. The complexity of your scene

Complexity refers to the number of polygons in your scene and how many different textures that are used. Please be noted that a scene with many different models/materials will render slower than a scene with the same amount of identical models, so if you are in a rush to render the scene, you should avoid using many different models from the Model Library. 

Here are some tips to speed up the import process:

  • Consider hiding models that are obstructed behind other models via the Layer functionality.
  • Export model via LiveSync instead of .DAE format because it will be faster and require less resources.
  • Consider splitting the model into small parts and importing them into separate models in Lumion.

Below are some tips to lighten your model.

1- Sketchup:

  • Skimp: This tool helps to reduce the amount of mesh in the model.
  • Material Resizer: This tool checks the size of material textures in your model and allows you to quickly resize them.
  • CleanUp3: This tool cleans and optimizes your SketchUp model.

2- Revit:

The Surface Smoothing slider lets you define how detailed curvy surfaces should be. Setting it to the maximum will bring a serious impact on the time it takes to import the model as well as the performance and rendering speed in Lumion. For that reason, it’s a good idea to set the slider to the lowest value possible while ensuring that curved objects look reasonably smooth.

3- Rhino:

Use Density setting to reduce the smoothness of curved models before exporting them to Lumion: Rhino top menu -> File -> Properties -> Mesh -> Custom -> Density -> 0.0

See more here: https://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/meshfaq

4- 3dsmax:

Use ProOptimizer modifier in 3ds Max to reduce the detail level of the models before exporting them to Lumion.

What makes your scene overly complicated:

  • The number of different models you added to the scene.
  • The 3D Points number in the top right corner of Build Mode. Click here to see how to reduce it.
  • The quantity and resolution of the texture / material.
  • The film / photo effects you’re using, especially Sky Light and Hyperlight.
  • The number ofReflection Planes have you added to the Reflection Effect
  • The number of Spotlights have the shadow set to Dynamic in the scene.
  • The number of Spotlights you chose in Global Illumination Effect.
  • The number of large surfaces have you specified 3D Grass.
  • The number of Video Textures have you assigned to the material.

To reduce time for displaying Pictures or Clips, you should try to reduce the number of all of the factors above. And make sure there is enough Virtual Memory of Windows.

Please also note that you can shorten rendering time by reducing the quality of Output, Fps (Frames per second) and Output Resolution.

For example: Displaying a Clip at 1280 × 720 pixels with 3 star quality and 25 frames per second is a lot faster than showing a Clip at 3840 × 2160 pixels with 5 star quality and 60 frames per second.

3. iRender offers a powerful server that is the best suit for Lumion users.

At iRender, we provide servers with the most powerful graphic card nowadays such as RTX 3090 Ti at the price from 3.8 usd per machine hour. That’s what we mainly want to show you today – GPU SERVER 3 (1x RTX 3090) which definitely will be fond of by Lumion users with the detailed configuration below: 

You can see that our Server 3 configuration completely matches these higher requirements for choosing a computer for Lumion. Let’s look at them in more detailed:

  • Strong processor: 

As we all know, Lumion uses a single GPU card to render only. However, a good CPU can speed up Lumion’s loading times. Because of this reason, iRender exclusively provides the Intel Xeon W-2245 with a strong processor base frequency which is 9GHz – 4.7GHz, 8 cores and 16 threads on GPU server 3.

  • The most powerful graphic card:

To speed up the rendering process, Lumion requires one powerful GPU with many CUDA cores and large Vram. The CUDA core is found in two-card lines, Nvidia’s GTX / RTX and AMD’s Radeon. Here at iRender, we provide you with one of the most powerful GPU currently. It’s Geforce RTX 3090. This GPU card reaches 25,162 G3D mark rating points and has a large 24GB vRAM, which definitely brings much better performance.

  • Reasonable pricing

Our standard price for server 1 is $3.8 per hour but you can lower it from 30% to 60% with our Fixed Rental feature.

For those who’re in need of one/ many servers in a day or more, or handling large projects, we advise to choose a daily/ weekly/monthly rental package. The discount is very attractive (30% for daily packages, 50% for weekly, and 60% for monthly packages)

These are some of the most important things you simply must consider when getting a Lumion rendering project. Don’t go all out straight away, consider your current needs to invest your money in a powerful workstation or rent them at iRender farm.

Register an account here and turn your PC into a supercomputer today.

Reference: Support.Lumion.com

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Bella

Greeting everyone. I work as an Assistant Customer at iRender. I always hope to know more 3D artists and share benefits information with them.
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