Epic Video games unveils Twinmotion 2023.1 Preview 2

 
Epic Video games has unveiled Twinmotion 2023.1, the following main model of its real-time visualisation software.

The second public preview, due out later this month, reworks the software program’s interface to streamline entry to widespread instruments, provides help for decals and volumetric fog within the path tracer, and a brand new video denoiser.

The first public preview, launched in December, added help for LED partitions for digital manufacturing, shifted help for VR headsets to OpenXR, and overhauled Twinmotion’s materials system.

A simple-to-use instrument for visualising CAD information
Created by French visualisation studio KA-RA, Twinmotion was desgned to allow architects with restricted 3D expertise to create nonetheless or animated visualisations of their buildings.

It imports hero fashions in a spread of normal 3D file codecs, or by way of stay hyperlinks to CAD functions. Customers can then create background environments from a library of inventory belongings, and assign lights.

Atmospheric properties – together with clouds, rain and snow, and ambient lighting based mostly on geographical location and time of day – may be adjusted by way of slider-based controls.

The software program was acquired by Epic in 2019, and initially made accessible free of charge, earlier than being re-released commercially in 2020 with an aggressive new price point.

A recording of Epic Video games’ livestream saying the brand new options due in Preview 2 of Twinmotion 2023.1. The part on the brand new interface begins at 00:12:20 within the video.

 
Twinmotion 2032.1 Preview 2: extra streamlined, customisable person interface
One very seen change in Twinmotion 2023.1 is the brand new interface design, which Epic Video games says is meant to make Twinmotion extra accessible to customers working in fields exterior architectural visualisation.

The brand new structure is designed to scale back the variety of mouse clicks must entry key instruments and settings, with a Properties panel to the fitting of the display screen, shared with the scene graph, and a library panel on the left.

For entry to extra superior controls, customers can swap to a two-column structure, hiding the library panel.

The peak of the underside bar has been decreased, maximising the display screen house dedicated to the viewport.

It’s also now attainable to vary the dimensions of the interface manually – there are presets ranging between 75% and 200% – enabling customers to commerce viewport house in opposition to the legibility of interface textual content.

Nonetheless, one commmonly requested change to the interface that won’t be accessible within the launch is the choice to detach interface panels to show on a second monitor.

Preview 2: updates to the trail tracer, video denoising and viewport upscaling
The software program – which makes use of Unreal Engine for rendering – can be being up to date to Unreal Engine 5.1.

The change will make it attainable to help extra options in Path Tracer, the brand new path tracing render engine introduced last year, together with decals and volumetric fog.

Different new options due in Twinmotion 2023.1 Preview 2 embody an experimental video denoiser, making it attainable to denoise rendered movies in addition to nonetheless photographs.

The discharge may even introduce viewport decision scaling, letting customers increase body charges when engaged on advanced scenes by having Twinmotion render the viewport at decrease decision, then upscale to suit the display screen.

Preview 1: help for LED partitions for digital manufacturing
Options already accessible in Preview 1 embody help for LED partitions, making it attainable to make use of environments rendered in Twinmotion as backdrops for stay shoots throughout digital manufacturing.

Each Twinmotion’s raster renderer and the brand new path tracer are supported, with customers in a position to configure the quantity and dimension of screens used to make up the LED wall, and the curvature of the wall.

 
Preview 1: updates to the fabric system
The replace additionally overhauls Twinmotion’s materials system, including help for opacity maps on “most materials sorts”, plus the choice to regulate metalness and to do “primary color correction” on the Base Coloration texture.

Glass materials now use a metallic-roughness PBR workflow and help iridescence, with a brand new Coloured glass materials kind for producing colored shadows.

The discharge ships with 21 new readymade glass supplies and 34 new automotive paint supplies.

Preview 1: OpenXR help, and compatibility-breaking modifications to the Twinmotion file format
As well as, Twinmotion now helps VR and blended actuality {hardware} by way of the OpenXR open commonplace. New headsets supported embody these developed by Varjo.

The Twinmotion .tm file format has additionally been up to date, with meshes and textures now routinely de-duplicated on export, and HDRIs compressed and embedded, decreasing mission file sizes.

The change is compatibility-breaking, with Twinmotion 2023.1 not in a position to open information created in Twinmotion 2019 and earlier.

Exterior the core software program, it’s now attainable to import initiatives exported by way of Twinmotion’s Datasmith Exporter in .udatasmith format immediately into Unreal Editor.

Worth, system necessities and launch date
Twinmotion 2023.1 is offered as a public preview for Home windows 10+ and macOS 12.0+. Integration plugins can be found for CAD and DCC apps together with 3ds Max 2016+, SketchUp Professional 2019+ and Unreal Engine 4.27+.

Feedback in this post on the official Twinmotion Fb group counsel that Preview 2 shall be launched in the direction of the top of March 2023. Preview 1 is offered now.

New licences have an MSRP of $499. The software program is free for college kids and educators, and there’s additionally a free trial edition of the software program which caps export decision at 2K, however which is in any other case totally featured.

 
Read a full list of new features in Twinmotion 2023.1 in the online changelog

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