IMAGINiT Building Solutions Blog

Sculpting and Painting Landscapes in Twinmotion

By: Kenniston Crane, IMAGINiT Technologies

Mastering the terrain in Twinmotion is simple and can bring more realism to your project.

NOTE: The workflow below does not refer to topography brought in from another software.

In the Library, navigate to the folder called Vegetation and Landscape.

Inside the Vegetation and Landscape folder is a Landscapes subfolder that contains two different types of landscapes. One is Flat, the other is Rocky Grasslands. Select one to pull into your view window. The landscape type you've chosen will become a new object in the hierarchy on the right.

After dragging it into the view window, you can transform it similar to any other object in the hierarchy. Also, you have access to two tools in the bottom interface:

• Sculpt Terrain
• Paint Terrain

Let's look at Sculpt first.

Sculpt Terrain

With Sculpt terrain, you can sculpt rolling hills, valleys, trenches, or mountains across the terrain element. This is dependent on the diameter or intensity. The Shape tool determines the sort of alpha channel used to sculpt, similar to Blender or Max. You can choose the size, intensity, and shape. The icons at the top of this ribbon are your brushes. Select a brush to indicate the direction in which you want the sculpt to form.

Paint Terrain

The Paint terrain function blends multiple ground materials together. You can achieve different effects by adjusting the diameter, scale, opacity, and shape.  Blending can create a path in a forest, or a patch of snow, as though Frosty was melting on a warm summer day.

Leverage the terrain tools in Twinmotion to bring an essence of realism, or fantasy, to your scene, then create stills and videos to tell your story. You can also slip it into VR or just use the EXE export, and allow others to experience your virtual world.

Twinmotion Webinar: What's New in Twinmotion 2020.1

The recent release of Twinmotion 2020 raises the bar for fast, easy real-time architectural visualization, providing a greater sense of presence and realism. Martin Krasemann, Twinmotion Technical Marketing Specialist at Epic Games presents a deep dive into some of the new Twinmotion 2020.1 features.

 

Twinmotion Webinar: Importing and Working with External Assets

Twinmotion's Technical Evangelist Craig Barr dives into common workflows and provides tips for working with external assets in Twinmotion. He takes you through the requirements and file formats for assets coming into Twinmotion, as well as shows you how to work with your own user library of custom-built assets and third-party content.

 

 

 

 

Twinmotion Webinar: Fast Architectural Visualization

Learn how to take advantage of Twinmotion’s fast, easy workflow for architectural visualization. In this webinar, Daryl Obert from Epic Games introduces Twinmotion and discusses how it fits into a workflow for fast real-time architectural, construction, urban planning, and landscaping visualization. Twinmotion Product Specialist Martin Krasemann reviews the types of projects that the software is best suited for, and presents a deep dive into some of the features that will get you the most from Twinmotion. Watch this webinar replay to learn how to create high-quality images, panoramas, and standard or 360° VR videos in seconds with Twinmotion!

 

 

Twinmotion 2020 Tips & Tricks - Using the Gizmo

Learn how to use the gizmo in Twinmotion to easily move, rotate, and resize objects in your scene with beginner tips in this tip tutorial.

 

 

Twinmotion 2020 Tips & Tricks - Animate a Curtain

Bring your project to life with curtains blowing in the wind.  Watch this tip tutorial to learn how to create an animated curtain using this object from the Twinmotion default library. 

 

 

Twinmotion 2020 Tips & Tricks - Create a Mirror

In a real-time application, it can be difficult to render a mirror because of the screen space reflection. In this tip tutorial, learn how to use Reflection Probes and SSR setting to create a mirror in Twinmotion.

 

 

Autodesk to Twinmotion: Preferred and Accepted File Formats

Preferred versus Accepted

Twinmotion accepts many different 3D file formats for importing your model into Twinmotion projects.

Preferred file formats retain hierarchy, geometry, and material information when imported into Twinmotion:

Accepted formats do not include materials and import as a single object. Only one material can be assigned to these files in Twinmotion:

DirectLink for Revit

The DirectLink add-in for Autodesk Revit allows users to link models from Revit to a Twinmotion project and push updates from Revit to Twinmotion. The DirectLink exchange is not bidirectional; therefore, changes to the model must be authored in Revit and pushed to Twinmotion for visualization. 

Twinmotion offers DirectLink for other products such as Rhino and Sketchup Pro. However, Revit is the only Autodesk product with this capability, currently. DirectLink for Autodesk Infraworks is under consideration on the Twinmotion Roadmap. 

View the table below to learn the method of linking/importing various Autodesk programs supported by Twinmotion. Preferred formats are in bold.

File Format Workaround

Use the following option to migrate your file from an accepted format to a preferred format.

Example: AutoCAD exports to DXF, an accepted but not preferred file format. Instead of using the DXF file, open the DWG file from AutoCAD in Navisworks or 3ds Max, then export to FBX. By converting the model first material definitions and individual geometry remain intact when importing into Twinmotion.

Twinmotion 2020 Tips & Tricks - Physics on Stairs

When Physics is enabled, each step on a staircase can make your walkthrough appear "jumpy". Watch this video tip from Twinmotion to learn how to create a smooth transition when climbing stairs in a real-time walkthrough presentation for your clients.

 

 

Twinmotion 2020 Tips & Tricks - Replace Object

The Replace Object tool in Twinmotion enables you to replace any selected objects by another asset in the Twinmotion library, including objects in the User Library. In this first Tips and Tricks video, you'll learn how to use the Replace Object to quickly add vehicles to your scene and also how to replace all the trees by another species in one click. This tool is also helpful to quickly place lighting to your model.