Description
Key Learnings
- Discover the value of a 3D environment model in your projects and learn how to involve your stakeholders in the design phase via an InfraWorks model
- Discover basic tips and trick that you should be aware of when setting up an InfraWorks model.
- Learn to import an InfraWorks model into Twinmotion, apply realistic materials, and create visually compelling animations and camera paths.
Speaker
- Rob ZuttRob is a design leader and responsible for the design of roads for many different clients; managing of designers, exchange between professional disciplines and assistant project leader. In recent years Rob has been, as one of the pioneers in Royal HaskoningDHV, mainly engaged in 3D road design, visualisations, scripting and the development of innovative methods. These new methods enable us to support our customers efficiently and visually in their development process, so that they can make informed choices. After his study Civil Engineering in 2002 Rob started as a draftsman and from that direction he participated in all facets of civil engineering (draftsman, designer, contract writer, assistant project manager). Rob is constantly looking for ways to simplify working methods, to do things faster and to make them transparent for everyone. This keeps people involved and then we are able to make beautiful things together!
ROB ZUTT: So welcome to my class, InfraWorks Chronicles-- A Decade of Lessons Learned. I started thinking about this class because, last year, InfraWorks celebrated its 10th anniversary. So that was my motivation to come to San Diego and tell you about this wonderful product.
A short agenda for today-- first, a short introduction to me, to a company I work at, and InfraWorks, my experience, then we'll head over to the learning objectives. And a big part of the presentation will be about project examples, where a lot of InfraWorks ideas and tips and tricks will be showed and, after that, a method to bring your InfraWorks model to a higher official level via Twinmotion. And at the end, we have a wrap-up and show some conclusion.
I am a Rob Zutt. I am from the Hague. It's the political capital of the Netherlands. I work at Royal HaskoningDHV. I've been working there for 17 years now. And I have a Civil Engineering degree. And the software I work most with are Civil 3D, InfraWorks, and Twinmotion. But I also have other software on my system, like SketchUp, Blender, Fusion, Fusion 3D Printing, GIS, Visual Studio, yeah, also some skills in that.
Me and InfraWorks, I've been working with InfraWorks since 2014. I went to a demonstration of Twinmotion and just played with it. But my biggest challenge was that there weren't any Dutch roads. So I started configuring the InfraWorks templates and created some Dutch roads so we could use it, also, good in the Netherlands. And I another tweet, which was also from 2014, playing with LEGO when I was young. And then there was Sim City. And yeah, then there was InfraWorks, . Where we also could just build anything.
I also have presented earlier at the AU. The first time was together with Michel Belien. Together, we presented about creating a tunnel model that was smartly linked to a road design. If you click on these links, you can get to these presentations. I also presented during the COVID time. It was an online presentation. And in this presentation, I talked about how I got my 3D virtual design to a LEGO model. And I also have a link. You can watch this back.
I work at Royal HaskoningDHV. That's a company I work at. So here are some stats about Royal HaskoningDHV. The Netherlands is located here. We have a lot of windmills. And, yeah, I think it's very good company. It's very big. I have a lot of colleagues, and I have a lot of opportunity to do things that I think are smart or innovate. And I get room for that, so I'm very happy to work at this company. Yeah, and it's about 9,000 kilometers from where we are now in San Diego, so it was quite a trip.
This class is for a diverse group of audience. For starters or students, it's like, what can be done in this class in InfraWorks, for engineers, how can it be don, for managers, what's in it for me. And also, just for everyone, I just want to inspire you with a way of working that works good for us and is nice.
So some learning objectives-- first, they were also-- when you started to subscribe for this class, you could watch these objectives. There are three objectives. You can read them, but I got them a bit more clear in some words. So the first learning objective is the value of a 3D environment and how to involve your stakeholders within your design via that environment.
There will be some basic tips and tricks. And the tips and tricks will be, yeah, enlightened by this bulb. And there will be a number in this bulb, and the number in the bulb corresponds with the number in the handouts where you can find back some more information about that tip or trick.
And at the end, I will show you how to get from your InfraWorks model to Twinmotion and to get a more official compelling animation. The handouts are available to download. And in this handout, you will find additional information on this class, the tips and tricks written out, and also the workflows with that.
So now, to the big part of this presentation, this part is splitted in multiple parts. First, we talk about the base, how we get to an InfraWorks model, then multiple ways of building in this model, and for this building, and also a failure model, and then some analysis and some ideas about sharing your model.
So start with the base. If you start with a model builder, in the Netherlands, you get quite some idea of the way that it is as it is. But we see that, sometimes, the streets are not correct, trees are missing, city furniture is missing, and the buildings are not correct. There are some parts that have the correct height.
But, yeah, we could recognize a place, but it isn't good enough for us. And here, you see the image as it is. So the building is quite more different. And also, there are trees there, and the road layout is completely different.
Luckily, in the Netherlands, we have also open data. And this open data has more information about the buildings. The heights are more correct. Also, our open data for train services are more detailed. You can have a train map of a 5 by 5 meter in tiles, or for half a meter. And also, the aerial photos are available with a density of 7.5 centimeters. We can get the trees from data sources, and the city furniture.
And then we also have the opportunity to add 3D meshes. You can get them from Google Earth Tiles. Sometimes, we hire a local surveyor to get this information from drones or other type of surveying. And we also have suppliers that can deliver us these buildings via downloads, and then we pay for that. This quite looks like the image in Google Earth. So in this way, we can get a higher detailed current situation of the situation.
Oh, some slides wrong there-- nothing wrong. OK, let's go on. Then there's also a possibility to add a point cloud. We can also download this from a supplier. Or sometimes there's a surveyor company that creates it for us. And you need to really think about how you want to see this point cloud because if the data is gotten from a car driving on the road, you see the point cloud from the road. But if you stand at the back of the building, you still see the front of the building because it's [? perceived ?] from one direction. So you should be aware of that.
What we also often do is create a landmark. So this building on top, it's created in SketchUp. And in the picture below it, it's the current situation. But it's a big building, and everybody in the environment knows this building. So they know, OK, this building is over here. So I can orientate how this new design will look like because I have a reference point. So that's tip number 1, add a landmark to your model so people recognize where they are.
And this is another example of a landmark. This bridge has a really specific look. And, yeah, it took some hours to create it. And yeah, it takes some time. But, yeah, it's very handy if you want to have people to get into orientation of a project. It's easily to have a clear view of that.
There's also a possibility to download these landmarks. So before this class, I just searched on the 3D Warehouse, San Diego Convention Center. I downloaded it, and I quickly generated an InfraWorks model with the model builder. And this is a result for that. I took a part of San Diego. It could be bigger. But for this idea, I think, to show, this will be enough.
Some buildings might be at the correct height. You see some difference in elevation. And you here see that the downloaded convention center building has way more details. And actually, this statue that is standing outside, I think, in real, it looks a bit different because it's mirrored or-- yeah. But the idea is that you can get the orientation right and you know where you are.
For trees, when we add trees, you can use point data, and import a lot of points, and add a tree to that. But in the left image, you see that all these trees are quite straight, and it looks quite straight. But trees are never straight. So what we do is that we created a script for that. So we gave all the parameters for the tree, the Z rotation and the X and the Y and the Z.
We gave it a random value so that every tree has its own scaling. And you can see in the right picture that then you get a more lively bit piece of trees. And this was tip number 2. And if you look in the handouts, there will be also some more information about scripting and how you can add this to your InfraWorks data imports.
Then, this was quite the-- how you should build up a base. And before starting a base and going to designing, it's important that you first create a new proposal. So this is that you have the base, where you have your current situation, and then you can start with a proposal. You can give this proposal a name or a number, like New Design or Pre Design or Construction Design, anything you want.
But if you do that, you can always switch back to the current situation and see what the difference is between the new situation and the current situation. And in the picture right below, you see the current situation. And if I go to another image, you see that this is a design. And I can switch back, and you see that there's a difference. And I also have another design. And if I switch to that, you can see that it's-- yeah, it's different from the other one.
But you can easily switch between these designs. And the switching in InfraWorks doesn't go as fast as this. And that's why, most of the times, you use PowerPoint to just add these images and use the animations to show the differences between designs or the current situations. And it works. It works quite good. So this was tip number 3. Always start with a new proposal so you can always switch back to your current situation or another design.
And because you can switch to a lot of proposals, you can also create a lot of proposals. For a project we created, for example, for some junction, we created multiple designs. And we also showed them in InfraWorks, or we created them in InfraWorks, so that there was-- we could make equal decisions because we were showing the designs in a similar level of detail.
And that helped a lot for the stakeholders to make the decisions. So here, we presented this in a PowerPoint. And we talked about it and, sometimes, switched to the model and dived more deep into details of the design. And we just give it a red cross if we didn't like this design. And if we liked it, it got the green check. And so we did this for certain parts of our design. And on that way, yeah, you can get a clear idea of what you want and what you don't want.
So tip number 4, design the options you don't want, also. Because if there's, later on, you have a meeting with a group of people who live there, and you say, OK, did you think about designing a tunnel because we want a tunnel instead of a bridge, then you can show, OK, we also designed this one. But we talked about it with all the stakeholders, and we didn't like it. We can show you the design, and you see that's way too much impact, so we didn't choose this one. So it's also good for communication.
To build-- to get your design created in InfraWorks, you can import it from CAD. So also, if you have a good 3D environment created, like I showed earlier with all the open data that you have, you can use 2D data to import OPX. So the blocks you have in a drawing-- for instance, here, I have some blocks of traffic lights.
And these blocks I give certain values with it when exporting to a shape file. And the shape file is imported into InfraWorks. And with some scripting, if this, then that, you can say, OK, this traffic light with this name and this rotation, put the 3D model of traffic light there on that location with this rotation. And then you don't have to put every traffic light manually in the 3D model. So that's what you can do with points.
With lines, it's quite the same. You have a line, you say, OK, this line is-- actually, it's a guardrail or a fence. Along this line, I want to create a guardrail. So you need to do some scripting with that. But if once you have these scripts, you can just generate them, copy them, and improve them to easily get from your 2D design to a 3D InfraWorks model.
Then you have the polygons, mostly the closed polylines. So you take this polylines with the layer name. And if you put that to InfraWorks, you can say, OK, this is an asphalt road with some kind of layer type. If you put this in your InfraWorks model, then use this material of asphalt or grass or red asphalt, et cetera.
So, yeah, this is about how. I told it in the earlier slide. But you can export your cut elements. And you can map, for instance, the layers to InfraWorks elements-- so the coverage areas, 3D objects, et cetera. And here is a part of a script. So at the first red rectangle, you see that the coverage name will take the layer name from the source. So that is your CAD layer. And then there's an IF statement.
And it looks, OK, if this coverage name is the same as this layer name that is in the second red rectangle, then use the rule style. And then you get this coverage style. And it calls a DTBS Vault. And so then that gives it this coverage style. And this is just a simple "if this, then that." And you can just copy this rule over and over.
So you have this IF, and then you have this ELSE IF, ELSE IF, ELSE IF, et cetera. And then you get-- for all your closed polylines of your design, you can easily map this to your coverage areas in InfraWorks. So that was tip number 5, more details about that in the handouts.
What we also got from the client sometimes is, yeah, is it accurate enough? So what we did here, we had a design of a roundabout, and we showed how it looked like in InfraWorks. Maybe it went a bit quick, so I will play it-- let it play again when it's finished. So here, you see the design. And then it goes to the InfraWorks model. If you're watching this back, you just can do the pause and back to see it again.
So importing is one thing that you can do in InfraWorks. You can also design in InfraWorks. And designing you can do with component roads. So here's a lot of text about what component roads are in our configurable component roadway assemblies. And you can use vertical and horizontal geometry to precisely control the layout of your roads. And you can then use corridor and profile optimization and a lot of extra more analysis to scale up this design.
So on the left, you see a road with a bridge over it. And I've been working with component roads for the last four years. And I see that it has improved very good because, yeah, you can easily add the parameters to your horizontal design. for instance, your A value or your radius value, you can really put in the parameters. Also, for your vertical design, you can add the exact percentage for the grades and exact elevation of your bridge.
So it works quite good. And I think the tip will come later, but start working and trying for how to create component roads. And maybe you can challenge yourself to do it with a client, to create a design and other design options.
So here is a video. It is times 4 for the time. So it goes-- the speed is 4 times faster to show how fast you can create a bridge. So first, you click the horizontal design. Then you add the curves. You can drag or you can type in the values. If you have already created roads before, some part of road assemblies-- for instance, this bike track with the red pavement that we have that in the Netherlands-- or this is not a bridge. This is the tunnel, excuse.
And then you also can save these assemblies and easily use them. And, yeah, you can just drag and put it in the right elevation. And, yeah, this was how you can quickly create a bridge. So this video was-- actually, it was 40 seconds long, so it was 160 seconds in real time. So it was less than three minutes to create this. If you, yeah, just try it and get better at it, and it helps you maybe to do it together with a colleague or together with a client or together with your product manager to just quickly show and maybe change design proposals.
So this was step number 6, design in real time with your stakeholders. If you do it together, you can get further. 1 plus 1 is 3. So this was-- the image below was the design with the tunnel, and above was the design with a bridge. Once you have one of the designs, you can easily use the profile just to drag it down and create a tunnel from a bridge or the other way around.
This was a project we also did with component roads. Again, here, this was, yeah, some kind of a landmark here. I created this bridge with simple polygons just to get the idea of what the location was. People who know a little bit about the area would recognize this as the same bridge. It was not that high detailed. But for this part of design, that was enough.
So this bridge was end-of-life cycle, so it needed to be removed. And there were multiple options-- a new bridge or maybe a fixed bridge. But they say, OK, a fixed bridge is not really the option because it was way, way too big. We didn't have to design it. But, yeah, I was playing with the component roads, and I thought, OK, let's try to design it. So I tried to design it with the component roads. And I knew there needed to be a clearance zone of meters.
So I just created a simple cube I got from InfraWorks, this transparent cube. And I scaled it with the correct height and to get the idea of the clearance zone. And then it was just easily to get a reference to the new bridge. Again, here, design the options you don't want. So this was the design. People said-- or the project manager, no, we are not going to design this because this is not an option. But because I wanted to learn these component roads and I was just playing with it, I thought I'd just design it because I can do it, and it's quite easy.
And I would really want to what the impact would be as it would be a bridge of 30 meters high. In a flat land like the Netherlands, it would be a real landmark. And so that was tip number 4, back to the other one. And this is the other tip, just a simple shape to create a clearance zone. So this was a scaled standard cube. You drop it in, you go to the properties, and scale the Z to 30 meters and the X to the width where the boat needs to go with. And then you easily can get this clearance zone shape.
This was the-- this design, eventually, just also was shown to the client because, yeah, we wanted to show them, OK, this is what you don't want, and this is why you don't want it. Because we saw that, if we looked at the junctions, the intersections, away from the canal, there still was a big elevation difference. On the left side, it was 12.5 meters. And on the right side, it was 70 meters.
And that would also mean that these junctions needed to be more complex than now. And, yeah, one of the project stakeholders, when they saw these pictures, they said, OK, please send me this picture because still a lot of people are asking me why not a bridge. And this picture says it all. So this was quite a good example for also design the things that you don't want.
The solution eventually was an aqueduct. So here, you see on the right side, you see that there's an aqueduct at the right side and, in this case, also at the north side of the bridge. And this was also created with component roads that were quite easy. But they also wanted to have a design on the south part of the bridge. And we went to the meeting, and I said, OK, I know I can design the south side of the bridge within a few minutes because it's just I drag the alignment to the side of the bridge, do some adjustments.
And then we can show the client the possibilities of this software and of our skills, and also how to create a new design. And I think-- yeah, so this was the design at the end of the side of the bridge. And because we had these two options, we could dive more into the details, OK, what are the differences between this one? And so in the session, we had a lot of information to make a decision of what was the best location.
And I think this is the movie where I show how to go from the north side to the south side. This was the time speed of 2.5. And I first dragged the alignment to the south. And then I needed to check, OK, where was the start of my tunnel again? OK, I need to drag my vertical profile there. And yeah, I think that was it. I'll need to stretch the tunnel because it was moved.
And the other way, it looks OK. Put it a bit shorter. And, yeah, I think that was it. And you see also here that, at the junctions we saw earlier, we were on the same elevation as a normal elevation. And also here, you see the cross-sections for this tunnel. It's quite good to show that and to see what the difference in height is.
So this was speed times 2.5. I did it within a minute. This video was within a minute, so it was 2.5 minutes to change this. I think, yeah, that was the same tip as before-- design in real time with your stakeholders. And if you do it more often, you get more confidence with it. And you can design together and, yeah, maybe get to other ideas if you design together.
Another thing you also can do and build is underground infrastructure. This was a project in Alphen aan de Rijn in the province of South Holland. Here, again, at the left, there is this special elevated bridge, also a landmark. So another tip from earlier, create landmarks. So we designed-- or we imported the 2D data to show the pipes and cables.
In InfraWorks, there were also some 3D pipe information and was created from a 3D model with an alignment and a profile. And this is the transparent look of the InfraWorks model. So that's what you see on the ground. So you see a lot of cables and pipes.
And this orange one that's in the middle, that was a bored pipe. And it had a lot of smaller pipes in it. And therefore, there was a vertical profile delivered so we could easily put that in our InfraWorks model. So here, again, this is the current situation. And in the middle, you see this orange pipe coming out of the ground. And so that was the exit point or the start point. It depends on how you see it. And the red line was a future new cycle path.
So from the top view of the design, we had it [? incut. ?] It looked like, OK, we're safe for this one because, yeah, we don't have a clash with this pipe. But as soon we got this design in InfraWorks, where the new cycle path was also excavated and going deeper into the ground, the exit point was not anymore at the same point, but it just clashed in with the bike track. So the solution was to move the path at the end.
But because we noticed this in an early phase, lots of costs were saved. If we didn't see this in InfraWorks and just on a simple [? card ?] drawing, we wouldn't think about that this exit point would have, yeah, some kind of an elevation that would clash in the cycle path. So at first, when we saw this, we thought, oops, this was a mistake. But then we thought, OK, if this mistake was seen in a later phase, then it would be way more costly to create a better solution.
Another nice thing to do in InfraWorks is to create animated objects. So in the Netherlands, we have these nice windmills. And to create animated objects, you can use 3D Studio Max. There are some YouTube videos about how you can do that. So if you go to the handouts, you have the links to those videos. I think the videos are maybe 15 minutes. So if you just look at it, it can take a small amount of time just to create it.
But most of the time, you want it-- if you just created it once, you want to do it better and better. So at the end, it may take more time. But I think it gives a nice, lively idea to your model. So this is the windmill that's turning, and also cars that are driving in a model also created in 3D Studio Max. And, yeah, it takes some time to create it. But once created, it gives a nice, lively model.
We also create a design phase in projects. So this was for a bore tunnel near [? Lede ?] maybe 20 kilometers above the Hague. And here, we created the temporary situation of the creation of the tunnel. So you can see the sheet piling. The sheet piling was created in [? cut ?] and we could easily get these cut models to InfraWorks, just could import them.
And for the whole machinery you see at the top left image, that was created by an external party. And we could just-- yeah, we got this. This is as an OBJ file. We could just import this and give the idea of what the impact would be when people are building there.
Yeah. Here, again, design the design phase in a new proposal. So earlier, we showed that you could create new designs in a proposal. But you also can create a design phase in a proposal. So you can easily switch between current situation design phase and a new situation.
What we also do is, when you have a complex junction, we create vehicle tracking to show how the cars are driving and if there's enough space, enough clearance zones from objects. And in this picture, we normally-- at the left side is the cut model. And at the right side, you see the image that is sent. So it looks pretty complex and a lot of lines. And then we saw this button, create 3D solids from vehicle.
This was created in [? Auto-Tune. ?] And once you push the button, convert to 3D solids, you get 3D solids from this vehicle. And you can easily export this 3D solid drawing to InfraWorks. And what you see then is that, yeah, you can see what the path for these cars is. And, of course, not all the cars are driving together.
But for instance, you can see that the yellow truck in the middle, when it's waiting for the traffic light, it's blocking the road for the purple car that's coming from the picture down below. And also, at the top of the picture, you see that the blue vehicle is clashing with the gantry of the traffic lights. And this was quite an issue. So we had to make a bigger gantry. And that was, yeah, a good way to show this to the client and to make a decision, OK, what we do about this.
For the same project that we had designed in 2017 with Civil 3D, and this design was created through an InfraWorks model. And along the project, we used this model to have discussions with all the stakeholders. So we had a lot of meetings with the clients, design sessions. And then we always took this InfraWorks model with us.
And on the left, you see the design. And on the right, you see the aerial photo of 2023. If you look fast, it looks quite the same. But there are some small differences with the locations of the markings and the traffic signs. But it gives, yeah, a good idea of what we thought it would be and what it is now. And here's another image. And you can see the same, that the traffic lights are sometimes in another the location. Also, the marking is quite different. But it looks quite the same.
And one of the things we did with the client and also with the traffic engineers, who are specialized in the traffic science and both the road, is to do a site analysis. So here, on top again, you see the design in 2017. Below is a car photo my wife took when I was driving. Yeah, here we-- the 2D design was converted to 3D model. So all the traffic signs and the traffic systems were converted to a 3D model, as shown earlier.
And important was that, if you are passing a traffic sign, you must see the next matrix sign. So together, we did this verification with the stakeholders. And, yeah, you see here that the red ones in front are the ones that we're passing. And, yeah, you can see that we also could see the next one. Also, another location here, where we could see the next trophic sign when we were passing the traffic signs. So we checked this before, and so we could do verification of the design.
And then, yeah, sharing-- one of my biggest tips is just put it on the big screen. If you're at a client or you have a meeting or with the environment people who live in the neighborhoods, you always want to discuss it. Yeah, just put it on a big screen. You can export the images. And what I mostly do is I use in a PowerPoint. And once it is in a PowerPoint, you can just easily switch between multiple proposals.
And, of course, you can use the images. But you also can create videos. One example of a video is this one. You can just create a video along a path to see how you would look like when you're driving. And this video or image you see now, we have our logo of Royal HaskoningDHV at the bottom right, and on the bottom left of the client.
But these watermarks, you can also create a watermark for a cockpit or a dashboard, for instance. So I created this dashboard for a car. And then if you, yeah, play a video, then it looks like if you're sitting in a car. We did this also for trams and buses. You can do it for race car or, I don't know, an F-16. But this is quite an easy way to get it from a steering point of view.
So that was for the InfraWorks part. And now we go to the visualization of your model with Twinmotion. So InfraWorks to Twinmotion, to go from InfraWorks to Twinmotion, you create an FBX export, and then you import it into InMotion. This test case was the A16. At the right, you see a big brown building. It's a hotel.
And every year at this hotel, we have a meeting with the Civil Infra Benelux group, where all the people from Belgium and Netherlands that are interested in designs are invited to have a day of sharing. Yeah, I would say it's some kind of a Benelux AU. And here, I was also telling how to get from InfraWorks to Twinmotion, and I use this as a test case.
So first, how do you get from InfraWorks to an export? So this is the model. This was created from the open data. I say export. You can select the extensions. You need to be aware of what you export and how you export it. I will come to that later. So this was just a simple way how to export it.
Here, you see some important things that, when you export it, remember, the offset of your export. These are X, Y, and Z values. And sometimes, you also have other types of software like Navisworks or maybe Revit, where you want to export things. And then you want to use the same number for this coordinate system. And so most of the times, I round off the number and keep it somewhere on a Post-It note or a digital Post-It note, or maybe in a digital file on my file location. And if you do that, then you also can use other software to import it.
But also, if you have an update of your model, there's always the same number. And it can be that if your InfraWorks model changes, it gets a bigger scope then this middle point of the design changes than your offset changes. So therefore, use a round number and save it and use it. So that was, tip 11, remember your rounded number.
Then you can also export different types of models. So you have your terrain, you have your city furniture, et cetera. And there's multiple ways of exporting them. And some parts you want to merge and some you don't. Yeah. In the handouts, you will find more information about that. Because, yeah, you can merge the terrain, but you don't want to merge all the trees because then they're merged into one object.
So here, we import the objects into Twinmotion. And also, this video is sped up. But it says just import, and you zoom to the design. And this is my design in InfraWorks. Then you can-- this was my ground, but I also have my buildings, my trees, et cetera. And once you have imported that, you can start to paint your material. So these materials are the materials from InfraWorks.
But because I merged my objects with the same texture, then, once I paint my grass, all the grass has the correct grass, and so on. It gets the more correct kind of layout. Here, again, there are the three objects. This one I didn't merge. I want it to be all separate objects. And if you have done that, you can replace your objects in Twinmotion.
So these simple objects represent the trees. And here, I show you how to replace this object. So here, again, you see this simple-- how do you say, [INAUDIBLE]? And I replace the objects with a bunch of different trees, just drag it in. And once I drag this in, you can say, start replacement. And, yes, these are Twinmotion trees. And these Twinmotion trees also have Twinmotion properties. So it takes care of weather and growth, et cetera.
Then there's also a way to animate objects. In the Netherlands, we cycle a lot. So we were very happy to get this way of cycling. And you can have playing kids. You can create vehicle paths for cars, bikes, pedestrians, but also custom things, so if you have a boat or an airplane. And there's a big content library.
This is a short video of how to create this path for vehicles. It's quite simple. You just drag a line, and you immediately already see some cars in this line. Once you have created this line, you can change the density or the speed and here, also, the lane count. So I have three lanes here. I see this goes a bit wrong, so I drag this, build it out little bit, and then you have the cars driving in the lane.
This goes quite fast. Actually, the first time I used Twinmotion, I took a model, and it took me one evening to create a nice video of it. I was so excited about the power of this software that I, yeah, was working in the evening. But it wasn't working. It was playing. So, yeah, if you have time and if you like this, just do this to-- yeah, because it's nice, and it will help you also to visualize your project better.
Yeah, you can also create a video. It just works almost the same as InfraWorks. You zoom to one location, and then you click the pluses and get the snaps between the videos. And Twinmotion automatically generates a path between these locations you took. And then you save it. And that's how you save it.
And I think, yes, this was the Twinmotion end result. You can play with the sun. You can play with the weather. You can-- yeah, here you see the trees are changing color. You can create different types of animations. And, yeah, I think it's really, really nice to use this to scale up your InfraWorks model. I think it's a big, big-- how do you say it?-- improvement of-- a good add-on to InfraWorks to get your 3D model to a higher visual level.
So I think it's almost finished. This is actually the weather that has been the last days in the Netherlands, I heard. So I hope we still get some little sun. But, yeah, it looks-- the results are quite good. There's also-- Twinmotion has a big-- a YouTube channel with a lot of tips and tricks. The link will be in the handouts. And, yeah, I'm very excited about the software, what you can do with less effort, a little effort.
Also, in Twinmotion, we did an analysis. There was this day and night analysis we did for a project to check what do you see if it's dark or when it's light. Can you see the traffic signs good enough? And, yeah, that was about Twinmotion. And we go to the conclusion.
Yeah, the end result, these are the goals from the beginning. I think that I showed you the value of a 3D environment and how to involve your stakeholders. So I give a check for that. Basic tips and tricks, some not basics, but there are tips and tricks. And, yes, the end was to show the-- to create a Twinmotion model to get to visually high, compelling animations. So I think we also handled that one.
And, yes, of course, are there any questions? If you have questions, you can just email me. And, yeah, if I don't have an answer-- I will respond. If I have an answer, I will respond. But don't bother to ask. I would like to have some feedback on maybe how you experienced it. So if there aren't any questions, I go further to the end of the presentation.
And I want to end with a quote. It was from John F. Kennedy. And in the moon race, he said, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they're easy, but because they're hard. I don't want to say that using InfraWorks or Twinmotion is a race to the moon. But doing designing in another way might be different or may be difficult for people. And some people say, OK, that's not for me, I think it's difficult.
But, yeah, it's very easy to always take the easy path. And if you take the hard path or the path you don't know, yeah, you get the best out of yourself and your energy and your skills. So I want to give this to you. These kind of quotes help me to think about that, and just not always find the easy way, but sometimes also find the hard way and learn from that.
So I'd like to thank you. And, yeah, also, thanks for watching. And I have some other quotes. Yeah, if you can dream it, you can do it. There's no innovation in creativity without failure. It connects to the earlier quote. Also, ask for forgiveness, not permission. Sometimes I just do it. And maybe, if it goes wrong, I say it to the end to the project manager, OK, this took me too much time. But most of the times, yeah, it works and it doesn't fail.
And another quote-- Michel put this in our first presentation-- if you do things the same way you've always done them, you will get the same outcomes you've always gotten. So in order to change your outcomes, you've got to do things differently. So with that one, I want to close this and thank you. And have a good time at the AU.