Twinmotion Import Materials

[Rocki Eibl]

Thefile is small enough that I could just apply textures to each object/face in Twinmotion. But mapping each object individually within Rhino, and then messing around with the textures again in Twinmotion would probably take to long and spell game over.

@Quentin_Beau_de_Lome

Looks like that you are collapsing your file by materials, there are other ways of collapsing your objects. these settings can be found once you initiate a direct import link.

Hi , We are loving Twinmotion with VW22 but we are finding that whenever we change something in our VW model , hit the direct link button and then go back to Twinmotion , that the materials have been reset to the way they were when we imported them. For example the glass of our building comes into Twinmotion with the material name given in VW. I then go to drop a Twinmotion standard two sided glass onto the VW material swatch. this works fine until I go back to VW to change some geometry (change anything in fact) and when I hit direct link again the materials are all back to the way they were when I imported. Thanks A

Hi, I'm running VW Landmark 2022 sp 2 and Twinmotion 2022.1 and I'm having an issue with plant substitutions in Twinmotion being overwritten when the VW direct link synchronization is executed. The plant substitution is removed and the plants revert back to the image props from VW. The Direct Link Settings in Twinmotion is set to Enable Substitution. Does anyone know how to prevent this from happening? Thanks.

@Dave Donley I'm still encountering this bug when using the Datasmith Direct link Synchronize tool with Vectorworks 2022 SP2.1 and Twinmotion 2022.1 (Windows 10 64-bit). Sometimes the material substitutions stick for a few updates, but most of the time they revert to their original state.

I'm not certain, but it seems to happen most frequently when adding new textures or objects to the VW file. Deleting or moving existing objects doesn't seem to cause the materials to lose their substitutions.

Sadly I am also getting the same issue with materials reverting back to the Vectorworks settings and overwriting the ones I had spent time and effort getting right in Twinmotion. I've tried using an export option (overwriting the previous linked file) and the direct link, and the same issue keeps happening. Very frustrating - Twinmotion is a great piece of software but this issue keeps setting me back and is making me question whether it's worth persevering with.

-Using the substitution check box seems to solve most material problems. I find that there is better luck with materials that have an image file in channels rather than shaders, so even for colors I have used color block .pngs.

And....back again. New project and TM resets the textures each time. Specifically the reflection settings, glow settings and sometimes even the texture replacement. I have substitution on, still not working.

With Vectorworks Service Pack 3 (shipping next month) the Datasmith Direct Link tool will be a true automatic sync, where you don't have to press the Sync button as much. There are many internal improvements as well in Service Pack 3 for this tool, and we think many of the issues you mention here should be improved.

I can share a link to Vectorworks 2022 Service Pack 3 so you can try out the new version and verify if it helps the issues you have been enumerating here. Let me know with a direct message and I will share the link with you. There are two more beta releases schedule for this before it ships next month. We are finishing up final safe changes.

There are cases where Twinmotion material overrides will be lost with certain operations done in the Vectorworks model, and these cases will remain. One case is if you change a plug-in object parameter, all objects are deleted first and then the plug-in script is run to create new geometry. The information to link the object with the material override is lost in that case. Another case is if you resize or do other operations to walls this is like recreating the wall sub-geometry which also breaks the link to material overrides. And there are other cases. Where we can, we are maintaining persistence so that material overrides don't change.

I can share a link to Vectorworks 2022 Service Pack 3 so you can try out the new version and verify if it helps the issues you have been enumerating here. Let me know with forum DM and I will share the link with you. There are two more beta releases schedule for this before it ships next month. We are finishing up final safe changes.

I think if you choose collapse by material it will limit you to only being able to override all objects that use the same material at once rather than separately per-object. Collapse by material should be faster for realtime performance, although I haven't noticed a difference in speed between the two.

Hi,

I have exported my model from rhino to twinmotion as an fbx file. However when applying materials in twinmotion it just does the whole model with the specific material. What do i have to do in rhino so that the material in twinmotion only does a particular part of the object in twinmotion?

Thanks .

1- Will the .obj files be included with colors and textures? Right now they are only monocolor when importing in external software. Even when including vertex colors is checked.

2. Will .fbx export included?

I am asking this because I use twinmotion as rendering software and texturing is very complex due to monocolor obj files.

3. Is it possible to expect a link between twinmotion and shapr3d?

I am using Twinmotion. I do import .fbx files from other sources with colors and textures included. Only the .obj files from shapr are mono-textured. This means I have to first split bodies to texture edges , etc, which I would like to avoid, because its very labor intensive. I am checking the twinmotion forums now. Its seems there is a bug there.

My workflow might seem unconventional - I design intricate products, parts, and architectural spaces and everything in between in one Shapr3D file on my iPad. This portable workflow allows me to keep all data in one file. It means I can send STEP files for furniture parts directly to manufacturers, and the overall architectural plan directly to builders. Improvements to the drawing feature would make this even better, But as I understand Its coming very soon.

Throughout the design phase, I rely on external rendering software for visualization, constantly adjusting components in Shapr3D and reimporting them into the rendering software to keep the client updated. The difficulty arises when trying to apply textures and manage files, due to the lack of hierarchy in .obj files. I intend to persist with this process for now, with the hope that Shapr3D will introduce updates to ease this workflow. Yet, this approach is becoming less viable given the mounting time and financial constraints.

It looks like the default material for ceilings in Chief is the same as the color used for the trim rings of the can lights which may be causing the issue. Also the "Lighting White" lens may not be a recognized material. Change those up and try the export again and there should not be any issues with exporting as .dae as opposed to .3ds

Would be interesting to see how this goes. There has been considerable discussion about Twinmotion, some very enthusiastic, but so far I have not seen any interior renderings, just exterior which are much easier to do as these only involve the sun.

Tried this morning and same thing, only had a sliver of one of the recessed light rings, but everything else including the rest of the fixtures were gone. At this point. I think I'm going to stick with HD Pro PBR and see what happens.

I believe that if you are going to export a CA model for use in an independent renderer such as Twinmotion you need to create your CA model and assign CA materials with this in mind. It seems to me that in the conversion(export) process is not dissimilar to saving a symbol, individual surfaces are defined based upon the materials assigned to those surfaces. So like a symbol, if it has only one material when it is saved then it sees all surfaces as being one, if the symbol has 5 different materials when saved then it is seen as having 5 individual surfaces(components). So if you have a house model and all your ceilings, walls and trim are bone when you export then the program that imports this will not separate out the ceiling, walls and trim, if you then apply a new material all of those items will change and you will not be able to apply different materials to each surface. Maybe different in other rendering programs but this is what I noticed when playing with Twinmoition.

3a8082e126