Thursday, May 1st, 2025 Posted by Jim Thacker Lumion releases Lumion 2025.0 html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd" Lumion has released Lumion 2025.0, the new version of its real-time visualisation software.The update introduces a new AI-based render upscaling feature, support for ray traced water and fog, and a new Scene Inspector for navigating complex projects. Lumion has also discontinued its old Standard subscriptions, cut the price of Pro subscriptions, and introduced new Studio subscriptions that include Lumion View, its new SketchUp plugin. An easy-to-use near-real-time tool for architectural visualisation work First released in 2010, and now one of the most widely used renderers for arch viz work, Lumion creates renders of architectural scenes in near-real time.The software is intended to provide architects with little background in visualization with a more straightforward way to create realistic stills and animations than standard DCC apps. Users import building models from other software, either in standard 3D file formats like FBX, OBJ, SKP and MAX, or via built-in live links to major CAD applications. They can then edit materials inside Lumion, set up lighting and weather effects, dress the scene from the accompanying asset library, and create simple camera animations. Lumion 2025.0: Experimental new render upscaling system Lumion 2025.0 adds a new AI-based image upscaling system, aimed at users rendering on lower-end machines.Activating AI Upscale causes Lumion to render at half the target resolution, then use AI techniques – which are performed locally, on the CPU – to upscale the half-size image. As well as reducing total processing time, the workflow is aimed at users with less powerful GPUs, making it possible to “output an 8K ray traced image, even if your hardware does not support it”. The feature is currently still in beta, and may result in loss of detail in fine textures, and does not currently upscale other rendered output, like depth, specular and material ID maps. Ray traced water and environment fog The hybrid ray tracing system introduced in Lumion 2023.0 has been extended to support water and fog.The Water Material now supports ray tracing, with the water surface now appearing in reflections for all of the ray traced materials in a scene, and vice versa. The update also introduces support for ray traced volumetrics, for effects like environment fog. As well as standard light sources, ray traced fog can be illuminated by emissive materials, volumetric lights and the volumetric sun light, and can interact with volumetric clouds. The feature is still in beta, and is described as resource-intensive, with some known limitations. Other changes: new Scene Inspector and library assets Workflow improvements include a new Scene Inspector, for searching for objects, layers and hierarchies in a project, making it easier to manage complex scenes.For performance troubleshooting, the title bar gets a color-coded ‘speedometer’ showing the current fps of the project, with more info displayed when hovering over the icon. Lumion’s accompanying asset library gets 200 new objects, with 68 new nature assets, including seven high-detail photogrammetric trees; plus 14 new materials. The update is compatibility-breaking, so projects saved in Lumion 2025.0 cannot be opened in older versions. Pricing changes: new Lumion Studio subscription, and Standard subscriptions discontinued Lumion has also changed the pricing and licensing for the software.The old $749/year Standard subscription, which provided access to Lumion’s core features and around half the total library assets, has been discontinued. The price of the Pro subscription has been reduced to $1,149/year, down $350/year, although the old floating licenses have been replaced by named-user licenses. However, there is also a new $1,499/year Studio subscription – the old price for Pro subscriptions – that includes a floating license of Lumion Pro, plus a named-user license of Lumion View, Lumion’s new SketchUp plugin. Price and system requirements Lumion 2025.0 is available for Windows 10+. The software is rental-only.One-year subscriptions have a MSRP of $1,149/year for the Pro edition; $1,499/year for the Studio edition. You can find more details in the story above. Both Lumion Pro 2025 and Lumion View are free to students and teachers. The educational editions are non-commercial licenses, and renders from the student edition are watermarked. Read an overview of the new features in Lumion 2025.0 on Lumion’s blog Read a full list of new features in Lumion 2025.0 in the online release notes Have your say on this story by following CG Channel on Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter). As well as being able to comment on stories, followers of our social media accounts can see videos we don’t post on the site itself, including making-ofs for the latest VFX movies, animations, games cinematics and motion graphics projects. Latest News Lumion releases Lumion 2025.0 Significant update to the real-time visualization software adds AI render upscaling, ray traced water and fog, and new pricing and licensing. Thursday, May 1st, 2025 Lumion releases Lumion View for SketchUp New real-time design exploration and visualization plugin lets users generate photorealistic 4K renders inside the 3D design software. 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