The release of Lumion 2024.0 has taken place

First released in 2010 and becoming one of the most widely used rendering solutions for architectural visualization, Lumion creates renders of architectural scenes in a mode close to real-time. The program is designed to provide architects, who may not have extensive experience in visualization, with a simpler way to create realistic images and animations compared to standard DCC (Digital Content Creation) applications. Users import building models from other programs, either in standard 3D file formats such as FBX, OBJ, SKP, and MAX, or through built-in live links to major CAD applications. They can then edit materials within Lumion, adjust lighting and weather effects, populate the scene from an included library of assets, and create simple camera animations.

Lumion 2024.0 expands the capabilities of the hardware-accelerated hybrid rendering engine with ray tracing and rasterization, introduced in Lumion 2023.0. Among the key changes are a new temporal denoising tool in Preview and Movie modes, making previews less grainy, and support for subsurface scattering in ray tracing.

Ray tracing can now be used with a larger number of assets from the Lumion asset library, including glass, translucent materials, and over 2200 "natural objects" such as trees. Additionally, it has become much faster thanks to a new Multiple Importance Sampling (MIS) algorithm: according to Lumion, rendering videos with ray tracing is now "up to 5 times faster."

Among other new features in Lumion 2024.0 is the landscape tile switcher in the material editor, allowing users to hide visible repeats in environment textures. Workflow improvements include a new vertical sidebar to free up space on the screen, grid overlay to facilitate scene composition, and eight new rendering style presets. Workflow changes include support for importing assets in glTF format and batch file import support. Additionally, the accompanying library has added 300 new assets, including 100 new plants and trees, 45 static characters, and 25 parallax interiors for buildings.
Lumion 2024.0 is available for Windows 10 and above. The software is available for rental only. The annual subscription cost for the standard version is $749 per year, and for the Pro version, it is $1499 per year.