[Music] when you are building a cabin in the middle of a Pine Forest you can't just focus on
the cabin itself it's all about the connection between the cabin and the forest you want the
cabin to blend in with the environment and feel like a natural extension of the forest not just
some random building plopped in the middle of it it's all about giving contacts to your
design think about the landscape around your design like the trees and rocks and even add
a little something extra like a man-made stone wall all these elements come together to help tell
story and make your design even more impactful so don't just focus on the cabin but think about the
environment and how we can take your project to the next level hi I'm Nuno Silva and in today's
video I'll show you the process of creating this peaceful getaway in the forest with lumion
so for this project I knew I had to gather some real world inspiration even though I had my own
experiences to draw from I wanted to be sure that I had a lot of information about how a certain
type of environment works in the real world so like with every project I am using puref a great
tool for copying pasting all the reference images I find online with these references
I can see how the pine trees grow and how the floor is full of pearls and different
types of vegetation and all of these elements will help me create a believable environment
I started with this house model that I got from 3D sky I opened it in 3ds Max and added a plane
that will serve as light base Terrain but no land is completely flat so I added a few variations to
the geometry and then added a noise modifier to give it a more natural and random look
this next step is crucial as it will be essential in lumion the software I'll be using for rendering
the project I duplicated the terrain moved it down about 2 centimeters and set the new material this
will allow for about rich and detailed Terrain in lumion after importing the house with a basic
terrain the first thing I will do is add more detail to the lumion terrain you don't want to
live with this endless Horizon which is definitely not the case in any Pine Forest so I grab the
terrain tool select the raised property increase the brush size and begin painting some areas of my
terrain higher than others I just want to create some variation to break up that horizon line
once the terrain is complete it's time to switch to photo mode and set up a camera that accurately
captures our vision with the new camera angle you can see that the endless Horizon is gone which is
exactly what we want to accomplish it's a good way to create a more realistic and natural environment
and it will make the final render look great I will use a 24 millimeter camera with a height of
about 1.2 meters this height is great to give some Dimension to the building and its surroundings
I'll store the camera position by clicking on the icon in the bottom left corner
and now I'm going to show you one important trick you can do to save time and resources
when building complex scenes with a lot of vegetation assets like this one one of
the most important aspects of this design is the pine trees even though lumion has a great
selection of high quality vegetation assets I couldn't find the ones that I was looking for
I went to 3D sky and searched for pine trees and found this
each set has four different variations which is perfect to create a lot of variety now the easiest
way to get this acid to the woman the right way is by using lime exporter this 3ds Max plugin exports
the models with the correct settings and all the textures applied with just one click of a button
and in case you don't have 3ds Max there's also an online exporter available if you want to see
a full tutorial about it you can check the link in the description below adding all of
these pine trees in lumion May significantly reduce computer performance that's why I came
up with a nice and light solution for it this will work for any project you are working on
I created a new empty project and loaded in all the same trees and vegetation assets that
I'll be using in my cabin project I scattered them around the scene and then with the camera
with a focal length higher than 50 millimeters I took a wide render that covered all the trees
and don't forget to go to the rendered channels and select Sky Map as well next I took these
images to photoshop selected the sky with the Marquee tool and erased it from the render you can
use the color range to pick some areas that still have that blue sky to fine tune the selection
I crop the image just to fit the size of the trees and saved it as PNG after looking
at the image size I created a new plane in my 3D model application with the same size
finally I took this plane into lumion and loaded the trees image backdrop this creates a beautiful
background with a lot of variety and it won't cost you anything performance wise that's awesome right
if you are looking to improve your knowledge of lumion I would like to invite you to check out my
Lumi render course the course covers interior and exterior rendering animation and various
techniques to help you get the best results the link will be in the description feel free
to check it out if you remember I said it was really important to have two layers of terrain
I added the first layer of Pine Forest ground which I found on the mega scans website this
website offers a huge variety of services to apply to your projects I loaded all the textures into
the material properties and then on the bottom layer of the terrain I set the terrain grass
material it features quite thin grass blades which works great for this scene to adjust the grass I
went to the terrain icon on the bottom left corner and then on the grass I adjusted the settings
I've also clicked on icon that says add scatter object here I selected these
flowers and Scattered a couple of them through the terrain this gives some nice variation
for the Lumia terrain I simply selected a built-in material that matches well the
one I have on the imported Terrain next let's talk about house materials I wanted
something clean and modern for the house so I downloaded the plastic material from Mega scans
and for the roof I used the sleek black material from luminous Library I also
used wooden beams and dark concrete material for the deck to create a cohesive aesthetic
and for the glass I only increased the roof activity property before moving to mask placement
in lumion you can create layers to organize your project and this will help you not only to keep
organized but also to hide the assets which are too heavy and allow it to work with no problems I
will call the first layer house then on the second layer I'll rename it to background trees and
move all of this background three planes there by simply selecting them and choosing the right layer
now it's time to start adding some vegetation to the environment I created a new layer called
Lumen trees and with the layer selected I start searching through the hundreds of assets ready
to use I will choose a couple of them and then go to this icon on the bottom called mask placement
I'll add them by clicking on this plus icon and then simply draw a line like this [Music]
it's best to play with the randomized properties to give better variation to your design foreign
the number of items when you increase the width of the mass placement line you will
see that you could use a higher number of assets so I added more lines to better
cover the background here you can Define other type of vegetation assets as well
[Music]
it is time to start turning this into a real Pine Forest you will find a section called Fine detail
Trace these assets are high quality you can even see all the bark little details and fine details
on the leaves this will work great to have in the foreground close to the camera where
we can see those details I selected these Pines and scatter them throughout the scene
then I selected all pine trees and click randomize rotation and scale again variation
is key in this environment you'll not find in the real world a plant or tree exactly the same
since I live in Portugal we do have a lot of eucalyptus which is an invasive species here but
since lumion has super high quality eucalyptus trees I'll add two or three to the scene
I'm creating a scene from a lot of references images but also my own experience of places have
been after adding Lumia native assets it's time to bring the trees we just got from 3D Sky after
importing the fpx and adjusting the materials I created another layer called sylvester01
since they are quite heavy I'll have them divided into different layers
I'll use again the mask placement and Scatter a couple of them on the terrain
add the second layer called Sylvester 02 and add different pine trees foreign
all these assets and randomize rotation and scale
but there is one important part we need to do individually on this asset to make
it realistic you see this photo many pine trees are inclined so I did the
same I randomly select a couple of them and start rotating them to be inclined [Music]
here's a side-by-side comparison of the rotation effect as you can see it has a
sense of realism and natural movement to the scene these Tall Pine trees look great but we
need something a little shorter in the scene as well so in a new layer I'll add these trees
these ones I'm just going to add them manually by clicking a couple of times on the terrain
let's go to photo mode and apply a preset from lumion I'll just add first the two-point
perspective effect and find a better position for the Sun that gives the mood I'm looking for
and in a matter of seconds we already have a nice looking image but we are far from finished
now it's the perfect time to start adjusting the composition a great way to lead the viewer to an
area of interest is by adding guidelines I will do this with a stone walkway and some wood fence
I found this asset from Mega scans both from the wild west and castle ruins environment which fits
great on my scene and by the way if you want an in-depth tutorial on how to import Mega
scans assets into lumion I'll leave a link in the description for you to watch I'm using the same
stones for the path just rotating and scaling them makes them look like unique assets for
the wood fans I added some inclination to them to give them a sense of age and as if they have been
part of the environment for some time this small detail can make a big difference in the overall
look and feel of the project here's before and after of adding assets to guide the viewer's eye
to the house which is the main focal point of the scene you can see how the additional assets such
as trees rocks and the pathway let the viewer gaze towards the house making it the center of
Attraction this technique of leading the viewers eye helps to create a more Dynamic and interesting
scene and makes the house stand out even more even though the terrain already looks great with just
two materials soil and grass we need more to make it look like a real forest in the forest
there's a lot of chaos fallen leaves branches small rocks and weeds scattered everywhere
adding these elements will create a more natural and realistic environment I'll start by adding
some tree stumps this will help to tell a story and give more context to the scene maybe it was
a tree that was too old that needed to be cut down or maybe it was creating some problems in
the house adding these details will make the scene more interesting and give it a sense of history
and it's not just about adding these elements but also how we place them you can place them
in a way that suggests that their work gets done recently or that they have been there for a while
this will make the scene more interesting and believable I selected a couple of branches and
using the paint placement tool I added a couple of them on the terrain I did the same for small rocks
along this Shadow the areas below the wood fence you'll probably find a lot of small widths there's
a section dedicated to widths so I selected a couple of them and add them to the scene
in these Stones you will probably find some moss and widths
adding them here it's also a great way to hide the stone repetition
again looking at my references I see there are a lot of ferns on these images next to
the pine trees these ferns usually grow in areas that don't have much sunlight
I got these assets for Mega scans but women has a great selection
as well using the mask placement tool I added a couple of them to the scene
and randomize the rotation and scale it's looking great but I feel that it's missing
high quality Rock assets to scatter on the ground so I got these models from Mega scans
which are placed lower from the terrain so we can just see a couple of the stones in
the terrain do this a couple of times and you'll have a richer environment [Music]
to finish the design I added these chairs from lumion and this fire pit next to them this makes
it feel like someone is really living there it gives a scene a sense of warmth and coziness
and it's a great way to invite the viewer to imagine themselves sitting in those chairs
enjoying the beautiful forest and to top it off I added some fire particles to the fire pit to
give that extra realism this small detail can make a big difference in the overall look and
feel of the project has the cherry on top of it you can add some birds leaves particles
and some smoke to the cabin chimney these small elements will bring the scene to life and make it
feel like it's a real life Forest the birds will add some movement to the scene [Music]
the leaf particles will give the impression of a light Breeze and the smoke that someone is living
in the cabin these details will make the scene more believable and engaging and it will make
the project stand out even more then also suggest the settings from the rendering Style change the
color of the fork to a dark green adjust the light position and overall mode of the scene
and made the scene temperature warmer I've also added the autumn colors effect
changed to all layers and adjust the values so we have more variation on the greens [Music]
and that's it this is how you create your next peaceful getaway using lumion
let me know in the comments what is your dream place you would like to
create and don't forget to give a video a like and I'll see you in the next one