Twinmotion 2020 is out now...check out these updates!

With Twinmotion 2020 now available, we’re taking a look at some of the exciting new features included in the release. Now, transforming BIM and CAD models into convincing real-time experiences is not only fast and easy, but, with Twinmotion 2020, immersive visualizations will offer a far greater sense of presence and realism.


 

Powerful new lighting tools


As anyone who has tried to create a 3D visualization will know, accurate lighting is crucial to making a scene appear realistic. With a complete rework of its lighting and shadowing implementation, Twinmotion 2020 brings more believable visuals.

There’s a range of new lighting features, including a new physically based atmospheric sun and sky model that enables you to create more realistic and accurate exterior renders at different locations, seasons, and times of day—including sunsets.

A new area light feature accurately simulates emission of light from large areas, such as ceiling panels or large windows, that fill a space with diffuse lighting. And a new volumetric light enables you to create the effect of light rays visible through particles floating in the air, to simulate scenes with fog, mist, dust, smoke, or other particulate matter.
 


Similarly, the depth of field effect in Twinmotion now closely mimics that of a real camera. Enhanced render quality, new controls on distance and bokeh, and an autofocus tool improve the credibility and quality of scenes.
 

 

Convincing vegetation


To appear photoreal, 3D scenes need vegetation that looks and acts like the real thing. Twinmotion 2020 provides a whole range of new and updated features that enable you to generate more lifelike trees and plants, and ways of more efficiently propagating it throughout a scene.

A new set of tree assets from procedural organic 3D modeller Xfrog raises the bar on visual quality for trees in Twinmotion 2020.


Each tree is made up of over an order of magnitude more polygons than the previous assets and comes in three different ages and four seasons. The texture resolution of materials has been enhanced, and a new two-sided foliage shader with sub-surface scattering portrays the effect of light filtering through leaves. The effects of wind are simulated at leaf level, enhancing the way trees move. And all bushes in Twinmotion 2020 have been replaced by high-fidelity Quixel Megascans assets. 

An option to fast-forward the growth of plants and trees across a span of many years enables users to see how vegetation will affect an architectural design as it ages. This is a boon for architects and designers who need to accurately show clients how a project will look at delivery and through the vegetation lifecycle up until everything is fully grown.

Along with more believable assets, additional features include a faster way to scatter vegetation throughout scenes, such as on roofs or in the crevices between tiles, and a tool that adjusts the look of lawns, fields, and gardens by providing options to tweak the size, tint, and dryness of grass, along with the effect of the wind on it.

Higher-fidelity humans

It’s not just plants that are now more realistic. All previous 3D animated characters in Twinmotion have been replaced by high-quality photo-scanned assets with motion-captured animation. The 62 new characters each come with five variations of clothing. In addition, there are 82 new ready-posed 3D characters, which are also high-quality photo-scans. All characters are sourced from AXYZ, a 3D design store that specializes in providing 3D people for archviz. 

Project presentation and review 


Twinmotion 2020 also brings a range of new features for sharing, presenting, and reviewing projects.

Twinmotion Presenter enables you to share an individual project in a standalone viewer as a lightweight packaged executable. You can easily create a presentation with multiple points of view and camera paths; the view can be set to free, guided, or locked, enabling you to choose whether viewers can explore at will, see the project only from pre-selected positions, or only play back the animation as rendered, respectively.

 

The new Note Tool enables you to add annotations to elements within your scene—great for providing feedback during project review or marking up commercial information such as the brand names and prices of different elements. Annotations created with this tool can then be exported to BCF format (IFC standard) in a zip file and loaded into Revit, ARCHICAD, or many other BIM packages. 

And a new X-Ray option on generic Twinmotion materials enables you to see the position of objects occluded by other objects. This makes it possible to visualize the location of mechanical, electric, and plumbing (MEP) data, for example, where vents are going in a ceiling or the location of pipes under floorboards, without the need to hide all the objects in front of them.

Support for working with Rhino and SketchUp 2020 data

In addition to these great new features, the release also provides a Direct Link with Rhino, enabling you to synchronize your Rhino and Grasshopper data into Twinmotion with a single click, support for SketchUp 2020, and many other updates.

Twinmotion 2020.1 is now available to download. As a special thank you to early adopters, those who had downloaded the previous Twinmotion release are eligible to get Twinmotion 2020.1 for free. There’s also a free trial available for those looking to learn the software or complete non-commercial projects.