6 easy effects for realistic close-ups
How to create striking close-ups with Lumion's versatile effects
Focus on the finer details
Close-ups can create a stronger, more personal connection between a render and its viewer. Take vegetation, for example. By using highly detailed, lifelike imagery—such as leaves, flowers, or other natural elements—you can bring a sense of energy and realism to your scene and tie the architecture with its surroundings.
This vivid close-up of a chestnut tree was crafted using a stack of just six effects in Lumion. Want to know everything that went into it? Let us show you.
#1 Ray tracing & subsurface scattering
Ray tracing is the secret ingredient that enhances realism like nothing else. By producing lifelike interactions between light and the leaves’ physical properties, it highlights every detail and imperfection in a way that mirrors real-life nature.
When combined with subsurface scattering, the chestnut leaves shine even more. Ray-traced subsurface scattering allows light to partially penetrate it, effectively capturing the soft glow of sunlight as it passes through.
#2 Depth of field
The next effect used to create our captivating close-up was depth of field. This is a fantastic way of drawing attention to the leaves’ intricate details by enabling them to be sharply in focus while the background is blurred.
This cleverly mimics the way a camera or human eye perceives close-up objects, ensuring the scene is as true to life as possible. The depth of field effect can also contribute to a soft, dreamy aesthetic, if that’s what you’re going for in your render.
#3 Real skies
What this scene needs next is a real sky. These natural-looking skies allow you to instantly recreate specific climatic conditions and atmospheres in just a click or two. Browse the full range on offer in Lumion—from moody thunderstorms to serene sunrises.
Here, we’ve added the Cloudy 1 real sky, to ensure the scene’s lighting conditions are as lifelike as possible. By tweaking the Heading slider, you can rotate the sky and sun horizontally, to get it in the perfect position. We positioned the sun behind our leaves, so it creates a pleasing halo effect.
You can also adjust the Brightness, Background brightness, and Sun intensity sliders until the lighting is just right.
#4 Lens flare
Next in our effect stack is lens flare. This artistic addition mimics the behavior of a camera, where light sources in the frame cause streaks and flares due to imperfections or reflections inside the lens.
Incorporating it here not only enhances visual appeal by introducing a cinematic quality, it also emulates the interaction of sunlight as it comes into contact with the leaves’ surface.
#5 Vignette
The vignette effect also mimics the real-world behavior of lenses, particularly older ones—how they sometimes cause the light intensity to decrease towards the outer edges of the frame. We used it here to gradually darken the corners and edges of our image, subtly shifting the attention to the leaves we want to highlight.
Vignetting also offers an effortless way to evoke a vintage or nostalgic feeling in your renders.
#6 Color correction
Color correction is a crucial final step to ensure your renders look as natural and visually appealing as possible. This effect lets you adjust the colors, tones, and overall appearance of any image to your exact liking, so you can create a fully customized aesthetic.
In this example, we used the Crisp morning LUT at 65% intensity. We also disabled auto-exposure to better control the lighting, increased the exposure, and reduced the contrast. Lastly, increasing the mid-tones allowed the image to become brighter and more balanced, in both the foreground and background.
Zooming in on fine-detail nature
So, you know which effects to use, but which vegetation is most suitable for close-ups?
The Lumion Pro library boasts 430 fine-detail nature items, which are perfect for capturing all the details and subtleties of real-life plants and trees.
These high-quality nature models come from all around the world and are available in different growth stages, so you can clearly convey climate, geographical location, and time of year. Try placing them in the foreground of your scene to create depth and draw the viewer’s eye. To build up the background, you’ve got 1,847 regular, resource-light nature assets to choose from.
Whatever type of landscape, garden, or surrounding context you’re creating, you’ll find a species perfect for highlighting up close.
Ready to recreate this FX stack?
Try it yourself with a free 14-day trial of Lumion Pro—no credit card needed.
