LumenRT - Disappointment

Hi Atticus,

I show how to create your own content in my June 2018 Visualization SIG there are a few SIGs posted where I show this workflow. It is very easy if you are on MicroStation CONNECT Edition if not you can just use OBJ files

Cheers,

Jerry

To add to this discussion; I’ve followed Jerry’s directions to create my own content and am slowly building a library to suite my own geographic needs.  It’s time consuming, but fills the gaps in the current delivered LumenRT content library.

I agree that the current library is strongly built around a North American context (or is generally not usable in my own African context). For example;

• Almost none of the animals occur south of the equator.
• A very small number of trees are useful to me (I’ve had to create my own in Plant Factory)
• A “flock of birds” are seagulls only (which don’t occur inland).
• All delivered Trucks and Vans would look really out of place on any road outside of North America.
• None of the Special Purpose Vehicles would be seen outside the US.
• Road Objects and signs are all North American, but easy enough to create local versions.
• While the People library has expanded, very few are demographically useful to me.

To create more usable People, this thread might be useful – although I’ve not had time to try out the links; https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/microstation_visualization/f/visualization-forum-1977638070/146813/lumenrt-content-people/446580#446580

The current library only includes one “silhouette” Character (Jose, running) – it would be really useful to have more silhouette characters. Perhaps Bentley could share how their Character library is being created, so that users could follow the same steps to create custom content.

On the positive side – I’m delighted to see that there’s now an animated wind turbine, but I’m keenly watching this thread in the hope that we can animate objects in future; https://communities.bentley.com/products/microstation/microstation_visualization/f/visualization-forum-1977638070/175463/lumenrt-custom-moving-objects

I do think there should be a quality review of the current Content library. For instance, many of the delivered buildings are simply badly mapped boxes (with no active retail frontages at ground level). For architects/ urban designers, they all belong to the “do not use” category – but I guess may be useful to some users. Buildings, Bridges and Small Structures are generally items I’d never use, as I’m creating these objects from scratch in Microstation. That’s the whole point of LumenRT – to visualise models created in a cad/ modelling environment, not to build urban environments within LumenRT. I’d prefer these items to be removed, and for the developers to rather concentrate on creating content that we don’t normally create ourselves (such as trees, people, cars, objects).

To get back to the original post - yes; LumenRT seems to be built around a core North American context, making it less of a value proposition to rest-of-the-world users. However, it is possible to supplement the content library with your own custom content.

Max

Hello Ivo,

Can you please share some video and workflow how to use this two software?

Specially Blender.

Thanks.

Rg,

Ankur Ashesh

Blender I have only used for it's integrated movie editor, so I'm not going to be of much help there. Sorry.

Makehuman is fun exploring. The program starts with a basic human shape, wich you can alter by clicking on one of several predelivered templates to change the appearance. Gender, race, age, muscularity. Then there are several poses to choose from and also clothes to dress the character with, just by clicking the desired clothing. You can also use sliders to alter each and every limb seperately. You can download additional poses, characters, clothes and haircuts that were build and shared by other users from the Asset section of the Makehuman website.

I've only used Makehuman for producing still characters in Microstation. So exporting to FBX or OBJ from within Makehuman works just fine.

The Makehuman site has its own wiki/doc

I've found out wich formats LumenRT and Blender have in common.

• Collada (DAE)
• Filmbox (FBX)
• 3D Studio (3DS)
• Wavefront (OBJ)

Only DAE and FBX can store animation data. The 3DS and OBJ formats are legacy formats for geometry and textures.

Blender has a Makehuman add-on avaliable wich is supposed to make integration of the two easier. Blender can also read  BHV format motion capture files. I don't make mocap data, but others do. Search the web for macap shops or some free examples. I've got no expertise on Blender how to incorporate mocapdata, but again, others do. Here's a tutorial of Makehuman to Blender and motion capture.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P1t_nogbGs

It's a start.

Hi Max,

It seems the bit for transparency is flipped wrong in the DAE file. You are in luck in that it is any easy edit to fix. Open the DAE file in WordPad and use Find and Replace to replace all the "transparency">1.000000 to be "transparency">0.000000. If you find some things are too shiny you could make edits to those values. LumenRT is assuming the materials to be Glass because of the transparency being wrong.

Cheers,

Jerry

Thanks Jerry, this was useful, and my test character is no longer transparent. The four materials attached to him had specular settings in LumenRT of 100%, so I dropped those to 0% and he's now fine.

The only problem now is to get him to walk forward for more than just a couple of paces.

I'd be curious to know if LumenRT development is heading in the direction of allowing/ encouraging users to create custom content, or would they prefer to release library content sporadically? Basically, would we be able to create usable .LOB characters from .DAE/ .FBX? I'm creating plants with Plant Factory and objects with Microstation CE, but an easy/ reliable method to create characters would be most useful.

Max

Thanks Jerry, this was useful, and my test character is no longer transparent. The four materials attached to him had specular settings in LumenRT of 100%, so I dropped those to 0% and he's now fine.

The only problem now is to get him to walk forward for more than just a couple of paces.

I'd be curious to know if LumenRT development is heading in the direction of allowing/ encouraging users to create custom content, or would they prefer to release library content sporadically? Basically, would we be able to create usable .LOB characters from .DAE/ .FBX? I'm creating plants with Plant Factory and objects with Microstation CE, but an easy/ reliable method to create characters would be most useful.

Max

Hi Max,

Adding more characters is on our list, you should see more content with every update we are working on this. In the meantime if you need some content you can get it into to LumenRT using several tools.I especially like the free models from Archibase Planet have you looked there?

Cheers,

Jerry