Light is the most significant element to produce a good architectural visualization. We can have a detailed building with a beautiful landscape and spend hours tweaking and adjusting the materials, but without light, all those efforts are useless. This is because without light, we cannot see the materials, the building, and the environment. We may have the most incredible building and a stunning landscape, but without the right quality of light, the architectural visualization can still be flat, dull, and uninspiring. For this reason, lighting a scene is as essential as having a good 3D model. With the correct light, we can produce a warm and cozy scene or a cold and wet Monday morning. Lumion's primary concern is to create good visualizations in real time, and for this reason, some corners have to be cut, but looking at the bullet points related to the topics covered in this chapter, we still have a fair amount of control over the lighting in the scene.

In this...