Description
Key Learnings
- Learn how to harness Twinmotion's advanced visualization capabilities to enhance your Revit design process.
- Learn how to create interactive visualizations with superior asset libraries and intuitive scene settings while maximizing Revit models.
- Discover Twinmotion's impact on design decisions, client presentations, and interdisciplinary collaboration within Revit.
- Learn about and use the Auto-Sync feature, streamlining model updating while enhancing Revit-Twinmotion collaboration.
Speaker
- AWAlex WoodhouseAlex is a licensed architect and design technologist leading TechStudio at LMN Architects. He is involved throughout the firm's work, contributing across all phases of projects while also guiding the firm in adoption of contemporary workflows and tools.
ALEX WOODHOUSE: Hi. My name is Alex Woodhouse, and I'll be presenting Revit and Twinmotion: Embracing Advanced Visualization for Enhanced Design. Here's our safe harbor statement. Please feel free to read if you'd like.
My name is Alex Woodhouse, and I'm a licensed architect and design technologist with LMN Architects in Seattle. I lead our TechStudio team, which is comprised of a variety of individuals who work across all aspects of architecture, looking at innovative workflows and tools in the advancement of our practice.
So LMN Architects is comprised of 150 people working across architecture, interior design, urban design, and marketing. We are based in Seattle, Washington. We have one studio. And we're practicing across North America. Our market sectors include arts and culture, civic infrastructure, education, urban mixed use, and convention centers.
And we're using all manners of software throughout our work, whatever tools are necessary really to communicate our design intent. We're quite nimble with the tools that we use. Here at right, you can see an image of our new shop space which recently came online, and is really important in our approach to our work.
So today's conversation is about how we can create compelling images quickly and easily. The learning objectives. We're going to look at the integration of Revit and Twinmotion for advanced visualizations. We're going to explore and apply practical applications of Twinmotion. We're going to understand and leverage the benefits of the Auto Sync feature, and we're going to implement Twinmotion effectively in some real-world projects.
So in the current state of architectural practice, a lot of time and energy go into the development of BIM models like the model you can see here at the left, which are used, of course, for the documentation and communication of construction. But not nearly as much time goes into the visualization process to support this architectural documentation. So what we're looking at today is how we can communicate from the left with BIM models to something on the right, which is much more visually intuitive, something that communicates the design, look, and feel of a space, and is informed by materiality, texture, environment, and entourage.
So when we're talking about architectural visualization, there's two categories of visuals that we're talking about. The first would be high-end imagery, which is typical of marketing quality, polished images, typically created by specialists. There's often a high barrier to entry for traditional design staff.
The first of these would be in-house visualization specialists. So at LMN, we have two full-time design artists who are doing visuals for all projects in the office. And the challenge is we typically have limited capacity and often are restricted to polished imagery that are occurring at milestones on projects.
Second, these artists are typically not working directly with the design team, but just periodic check-ins. And because of that, there can be a disconnect in design intent and the overall flow of image development.
The second type of high-end imagery would be outsourcing this to third-party vis firms, which can be expensive. Typically priced per image. The workflow typically is limited in its ability to input feedback, and there's limited flexibility once the process is started. Additionally, there is also a disconnect between the design team and these third-party artists.
Now when we think about working imagery, this is an opportunity to actually use visualization as a design tool. For instance, looking at different design iteration or quick iterative images that can effectively communicate design concepts. Additionally, these are usually tools that are more accessible and intuitive to all design staff, so you don't need to have that high barrier to entry in order to have productive imagery.
So as we look at architectural visualization nowadays, the reality is that graphics card performance and the processing power have gotten immensely more powerful in the last five to 10 years, and real-time rendering is commonplace. When we talk about real-time rendering, we're referring to the ability to visualize not in wireframe or shaded views, but instead actually seeing the rendered content as you navigate the environment. So other real-time rendering engines that are available now include Enscape, NVIDIA Omniverse, Chaos Vantage, and Lumion.
Second, BIM has become an industry standard workflow. And so this pipeline of where we're producing geometry and modeled elements and going into the visualization process are becoming more and more-- more robust of a pipeline. And lastly, gaming entities like Epic Games who make Twinmotion, they've entered the AEC market. So they're bringing these asset libraries and material collections and these 3D environments into the architectural space, affording a new approach to how we visualize and render our buildings.
And for those of you who aren't familiar, Epic Games is the maker of Fortnite. So they're coming from very much the gaming industry, and they're bringing across their skills and their software into the architectural space.
So what is Twinmotion? So this is a screengrab of the Twinmotion interface. So it is another real-time rendering application. It is a standalone app. So rather than working within Revit or Rhino, it actually operates independently with all assets, all materials, and scene settings existing within this standalone model.
It has a streamlined importing process from AEC using the Datasmith plugin. So rather than exporting traditional file formats like OBJs or FBX, you're actually pushing direct information from Revit or from 3ds Max into a Twinmotion model.
There is the Direct Link feature, and there's Auto Sync, which this functionality allows you to actually update geometry in real time in the Twinmotion environment simply by refreshing the connection from the Revit model or Rhino model into Twinmotion.
And lastly, it's important to acknowledge that this Twinmotion model can then be pushed directly into Unreal Engine, which is Epic's high-end visualization and gaming engine. So if you want to have those either more cinematic or higher end visuals, you can use the Unreal Engine with the data that you've quantified and you've produced in Twinmotion as-- you can use that model directly as a starting point in Unreal Engine. And lastly, just to mention, rather than using the Datasmith plugin, you can now use Twinmotion or connect to it natively within Revit 2024.
So to look quickly at the architectural visualization process, previously what we would have done is we would have set up an environment in Revit, a 3D view which we're exporting from, again, using an FBX, OBJ, or DWG. We would optionally import that into Rhino for some adjustment, cleanup, grouping, et cetera, and then likely import that into 3ds Max.
Once in Max, you would then apply materials, set up your scene settings like your day and your time, skydomes, locations, things like that. And you would begin to import assets into the scene to populate it with entourage, with furniture, vegetation. And then you're outputting images and post-processing in Photoshop.
Now, if geometry from the original model changes, it is a destructive workflow where once you've exported, you're going to have to redo-- that link is no longer live and you have to refresh that export and rework through these steps. So if we were to do this a second time with new geometry, we're redoing a lot of this work in order to get back to that end result.
Now, the ability with Twinmotion is that it really streamlines this connection from the Revit model to outputting images. We're setting up that same 3D view to start, and then you're simply linking a Revit model into the Twinmotion model.
From there, you're applying materials. You're applying scene settings. You're placing assets, all of which are within the Twinmotion model, and you're outputting images. Now, if that original model content were to change, what you'll do is simply refresh the link into Twinmotion, optionally using Auto Sync, which allows that to happen in real time, and then you're able to output the images. So there's not a lot of rework happening with this bridge into Twinmotion.
So how is Twinmotion-- Revit to Twinmotion impacting our design process? So we're going to look at a few different examples of what we're doing in the office recently before we get into a deeper case study in how to create a Twinmotion environment.
So this is an example of a smaller scale, interiors-focused design. And so this was actually looking across the duration of the design effort. And these are images that resulted simply coming from Revit and then populating with furniture and material and entourage assets in the Twinmotion model.
And what you can see here is just a quick GIF showing how one particular scene developed over the course of study. And as the model became more refined, as entourage was added, you can see the progression from initial design concept to finished images.
So this second study is actually looking at the real-time rendering and how it displays opacity maps reasonably accurately. So this isn't being used for actual daylight simulation or any analysis, but simply to understand these perforation patterns on the frit, on the glass, and how that can impact the visual quality of the space. This isn't something that you could do natively in Revit or in Rhino, and it doesn't require any post-processing or rendering. It's simply just viewing in the Twinmotion model that gives you this ability to iterate through different perforation options.
And now we're looking at a study on an academic project where we were collaborating with the structural engineer to look at this portal design and some of the different design options that came out of these discussions. And what was happening is the majority of the building was coming from the Revit model. We isolated a portion of study that was occurring in Rhino, and we were adjusting things in real time and refreshing the model to see these different design options and how they performed structurally with the structural engineer's input.
So now what we're going to do is we're going to walk through setting up an entire scene from Revit into Twinmotion, walking through it step by step. So what does this workflow look like, and how are we setting up the model?
So on the left, you can see the Revit 2024 interface with a BIM model, and on the right, the image that we're going to be producing at the end. This was set up in four hours approximately by a visualization specialist in our office, but I think most project designers could pick this up relatively comfortably, and I think with not much more than about a day's of work-- a single day of work.
So first, just in terms of how you access Twinmotion in Revit 2024, because it's non-native within 2024, it's much easier to access. So you simply go to the View tab. In the upper right here you can see there's a Twinmotion dropdown. And you open in Twinmotion.
Once you click that button, the Direct Link dialog box pops up, and you select whichever options you would like to bring over. One thing I would highlight is that you would ideally, in my experience, using the Collapse bar and saying Collapse by Material is the preferred method. And what this does is it takes the materials which are assigned in Revit and organizes them in the Twinmotion model by those layers.
And what's nice is that when you apply materials in Twinmotion, they are assigning to all objects with that material assigned in Revit globally. So you're not assigning one by one, but instead, it's a much quicker way to apply materials.
So now that you've direct linked it into Twinmotion, we're going to start with just getting familiar with the landscape, with the interface of Twinmotion. So first, what you saw is we turned off the ground plane, which shows up by default. On the left, you'll see the library which includes the materials, different objects, lights, and different paths and characters. And then on the right, you'll see the model and scene elements. So this is effectively your layer structure as well as your parameters or settings for the scene.
So now we're going to look at setting up a camera. So in the bottom middle of the screen, there's a Media icon. And within that, there is a Images category. And you can see here, two images have been set up. You can add more images with the Plus icon to the left.
At the right are all the different camera and scene settings for this particular view. So looking at the focal length, looking at the different Vignetting and Lens Flare effects. And when you're finished setting that up, you simply hover over the image and hit the Refresh, and it locks in those settings to that particular image.
So when you bring a model across from Revit, it inherits the materials that have been applied in Revit. So this Terrazzo flooring is actually using a bitmap from the Revit model. But in this case, what we're doing is we're actually changing the scale, changing the brightness, updating that material to have a bit more of a realistic quality to it through the Twinmotion Material Editor.
Now in this case, we're looking at the brick walls that came across from Revit, and the material that came across was a bit too harsh. And so instead, what we're doing is applying a Twinmotion-specific brick material to this wall. You can see once it's been applied, you can simply adjust the positioning, the scale, the color. And what you cannot see right now is there's a pop-up with the color wheel, which is not being shown in this particular screengrab.
Oftentimes, when geometry comes across from a Revit model, there's a chance that you might see some invisible faces. So in this case, the face is oriented downwards and you're seeing it on one side, but not on the other. When you access the material, you can simply scroll down to the Miscellaneous tab, and there is a two-sided option which then enables material to be viewed on either side.
Twinmotion is meant primarily as a visualization tool and not so much as a modeler, but it does have some primitive objects that you can work with. And so in this case, we're looking at making a pond here in this lowest level of the landscape simply by adding a plane and positioning it where we'd like. And then we're going to apply a water material to give it a realistic representation as pond water.
When it comes to populating vegetation, there's two different ways we can do that starting by at the center-- bottom center there is a Populate tab. And there's the option to either scatter or paint vegetation.
So first, we're going to look at scatter. So you start by going to the Library and Vegetation and selecting which vegetation you would like to apply. You then select the Scatter icon and select which vegetation you would like to scatter. And so you can see here selecting all three of these. You can change the age of the trees if you'd like.
You grab the Paint icon and you click on the surface, and it scatters this vegetation across the entire surface. You can add more density by simply adding more clicks on the surface. And if you'd like-- oh. And you can change the age of the trees simply by moving a slider if you want them to be older, more mature trees, or younger saplings. You can also erase vegetation simply by using this eraser sphere.
Now, the other option is to paint vegetation. So similarly, you start by first selecting vegetation to paint. And then there is a paintbrush with a similar sphere to what we just saw, and you can paint that vegetation into the landscape.
You'll notice in the typical viewing in the model that the vegetation falls off the further away it gets from the camera. And when you're in Path Tracing mode, which we'll talk about later, that's when you'll see this fully rendered out across the entire distance or depth of the scene.
So now we're going to look at character paths. So this is simply a tool that we can add entourage, either pedestrians, bicycles, or cars, by adding control points to create a polyline that navigates through the scene. In this case, we're adding pedestrians. You can control the density and the width of the pedestrians, the width of the path of walking, as well as reverse the directions all as different parameters for the path.
So now we're going to look at adding furniture by going to the Objects category. There's also a search bar at the top to more quickly find different assets. In this case, we're picking a table and chairs. And we'd like to adjust the material color, so it's just a simple act of grabbing the Eyedropper tool, selecting the color, and changing the color that's applied. We can also duplicate this geometry simply by holding Shift and dragging to create more instances of these chairs and tables.
To add animated entourage, you just drag and drop characters into the scene. And there's a variety of different poses. You can sit, stand, walk, be idle. And there are also different options within each of those, different versions of sitting, different versions of standing, as well as the ability to change the colors of their outfits.
Positioning is quite easy with the gimbal sliders to move in the X, Y, and Z planes. And it's important to point out that while we see them animated in the non-Path Trace mode, if you're using Path Tracer, they will be static representations of these figures.
So now we're going to make a walkthrough using keyframes. So we're in the Media tab at the bottom middle, and we're using the video tab. And we're going to add a new one by positioning the camera where we'd like to start, and then incrementally moving through the scene and adding new keyframes to this sequence.
And what this will do is it will render out from one keyframe to the next across the entire sequence in a duration that we specify. So think at the moment we have 10 seconds set up, and we'll see if that's the right speed. There you go. Press Play. You can see it's pretty quick, so we'll slow it down to a bit slower by changing the time right there next to the video name. That seems like a more reasonable speed.
So now once we have a scene set up, we have the assets populated and we have the imagery and videos we'd like to export, it's as easy as going to the Export tab, selecting which images and videos to export, and starting an export. So we've mentioned the ability to have real-time updating from a Revit model into the Twinmotion model. And you can see in the top left image from the Twinmotion taskbar, there's an option to synchronize. So when you click this, this synchronizes the Revit geometry with what's in the Twinmotion scene, as you can see in the bottom right image.
There's also the ability to click the Auto Sync feature. So rather than having to synchronize each time that you click, it instead refreshes every time the geometry in the Revit window updates. And so it creates a much more real-time updating effect.
On the right, you can see in the top image the facade was being studied, and so the opaque portion of the facade is a bit denser up above. And after updates in the Revit model, you can see it's a bit narrower in the lower image.
Another cool feature is the ability to change visual styles in the model in Twinmotion. So you can drop down to the different rendered views, and you can see there's a bunch of different options for what this environment looks like, all being rendered in real time.
And here, we're going to look quickly at setting the location of the model. Of course, location's important when viewing for shadow conditions in daylight and making sure that we're showing accuracy in how we're illustrating a particular scene. So you can see, it's as simple as opening up the Location tab and selecting your location on the map. Additionally, you can change the time of day through sliders as well as the weather and the seasons. All of this is slider-controlled, so it's very easy, very intuitive to work with.
Now, if you wanted to actually, rather than doing a walkthrough, look at a static image but look at the changing of time across a day, what you can do is simply have the same view and then just change the time of day from one image to the next. And in animating that, you'll see it's a nice time lapse, an easy, quick way to do a time lapse.
So here, we're seeing a final-- the full development of one image with the different camera effects and the Path Tracer. We're going to set up an HDRI scene so that we're getting a more realistic render effect. And you can see the visualization artist is playing with a bunch of different parameters. The sun intensity, the ambient light quality, changing the seasons.
The granular quality that you're seeing is the Path Tracer. So this is the higher end, high-quality render engine that you're seeing. And you'll notice that the environment becomes static when that's rendering. You can see some additional landscape elements being populated.
And so really, this concludes our walkthrough of the Twinmotion software and how easy it is to go from a Revit model to populating really compelling visuals through the Twinmotion software. I appreciate you joining me with this walkthrough, and look forward to the additional conversations to happen at AU 2023. Thank you.