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How to create atmospheric architectural renders using Real Skies

From a bright sunny day to a dark and brooding thunderstorm, Lumion 11 includes intuitive, helpful tools to infuse atmosphere and emotion into your design.


When it comes to communicating your architectural design, atmosphere plays an essential role in igniting emotions and heightening intrigue. It not only conveys a specific time and place for your project, but it can also enhance the feeling your design gives off while telling a stronger, clearer story about its form and function.

Even though your building design stays the same, a small change in the atmospheric conditions around it can dramatically impact how your audiences will feel when they see your project. You might argue that it can even change the building itself in unexpected, intangible ways.

Perhaps it’s the lighting or the time of day. Sometimes it’s the happy blue skies or the eerie layer of fog hovering in the distance. In this blog, we’ll be looking at how different, easy-to-build combinations of photo and movie effects within Lumion can help you convey specific climatic conditions.


 

Crafting atmosphere for the GFF House


A new build, flat-topped residential home with ornate wood paneling sits at the edge of town, occupying a prime location where the convenience of the city meets the fresh air of the countryside. This is the setting for the “GFF House,” an architectural design created by Lumion user Gui Felix and shared on the Lumion Community. Modeled in SketchUp, the GFF House features a simple structure to allow for sweeping views of the sky and a more natural-looking backdrop with trees, plants, rocks and more.


Satisfied with the model, we imported it into Lumion 11 using the real-time rendering plugin, Lumion LiveSync for SketchUp, and began crafting the context.

Within the Build Mode in Lumion 11, we provided natural scenery consisting of Canadian Poplar Trees, Maidenhair Trees and European Olive Trees, all from the fine-detail nature category. We also brought the grass, wood, glass, and stone materials to life with the help of the Materials library, where you can find 1,250 materials that you can customize with displacement, weather