Importing a proxy or a low geometry 3D model

What is a proxy? In simple terms, a proxy is a substitute for something. When working with applications such as 3ds Max, we can use proxies in our scene. The benefit of using a proxy is removing geometry from the scene and improving the viewport and the render speed. When the rendering starts, the render engine reads the proxy and knows that it is necessary to load the geometry. Although in the viewport, a proxy can be just a rectangle, but when we do the rendering, we don't see the cube, but the entire geometry.

Now that we know what a proxy is, let's explain why a similar concept can be used in Lumion and what the benefits are. Lumion is a powerful application and although there isn't any official number, we can import geometry with millions of polygons. Then, we need to add another big amount of polygons from the additional content, such as trees, plants, people, animals, cars, and water. For a scene, like the one we are using for this book, this is not a big issue, but when we start working with urban models, the initial adjustments that we need to perform, such as sculpting the terrain, adding content, and other tasks can start to make Lumion's viewport slow and difficult to manage, particularly when our workstation doesn't meet all the requirements.

A big explanation to say this: we can create a similar proxy of a 3D model and import it in order to improve the Lumion's speed. A proxy can be really simple, as we can see in the following screenshot:

The proxy used in the screenshot uses outlines in the fence, the swimming pool, and the main building. Still, this is just a suggestion and not something that we need to create to work with Lumion, particularly when our workstation is powerful and can handle millions of polygons. Let's pick the shovel and start digging the terrain.