• Open Twinmotion and make a new scene.
• Open the “Import” menu at the bottom of your screen. Once you have one or more files loaded, they will show up here.
• Click on the + icon in the menu that pops up. It is also possible to use the hotkey Ctrl + L. 
• Select “GEOMETRY”

The following settings are recommended:

• Collapse: by material
• Use Full precision UVs: checked
• Full precision normals: unchecked
• Light settings: Use original
• Enable substitution: Checked

• The faces of your geometry are flipped. Make sure to only export enclosed geometry (closed polysurfaces, extrusions, etc.) to Twinmotion. Your geometry should still show up in the Scene graph. It should also be visible from a different direction in the viewport.

In twinmotion, navigate to the “Import” tab that you previously used to load a new datasmith file. If you overwrote the existing .udatasmith file, you can simply press the “refresh button” that appears when you hover over the loaded .udatasmith file. If you saved a new .udatasmith file, you must press the 3 dots, which lets a small menu appear. In this menu, click on “file settings”. In this menu, change the linked file to your new .udatasmith file by clicking on the linked file next to “Your file(s)” and opening your new .udatasmith file.

In Twinmotion, navigate to the materials on the bottom of your screen. Here you can find an overview of the material layers you made in Rhino.

Navigate to the library on the left side of your screen.

Go to Materials and choose the material that you want to use. 

Navigate to the material properties tab. This can be done by selecting Material in the viewport with the pipette at the top center of your screen. The material properties will appear on the bottom right of your screen.

The material settings tab includes many settings for manipulating your materials. It is vital for getting a nice render. It is best to experiment with the settings to see what they do.

Some notable material settings include:

• Tint: The color of a material.
• Grunge: creates a dirty pattern on a material. It increases realism and decreases repetition.

Normal: Creates depth in a material.

• Make sure to try to enable the parallax. This creates 3D depth in an otherwise 2D material.
• Sometimes it is needed to copy the normal map and place it in the spot for the parallax. 

Emissive: Can make materials emit light.

Misc.: Two sided: Forces Twinmotion to render a surface on two sides.

• By default, to save computing power, Twinmotion only renders one side of a surface. If you placed a surface that only shows from one side, enabling this option solves this issue.

To ensure correct scaling and orientation of your materials, it is recommended to create a custom texture map. This can be done in Rhino as well as Twinmotion. Rhino offers more options to do this, but 9/10 times this is not needed. Therefore, this tutorial explains the way to do it in Twinmotion.

In the Properties tab, navigate to UV.

At Triplanar, select World Space. This will make sure that materials for objects are properly aligned with other objects.

Checking Randomize UV will make sure that materials are aligned randomly. This is useful when you want to eliminate repetition, for example in grass or gravel textures.

By using “Instances” instead of “copies” (or dragging the same asset multiple times in the model”, the computer only has to load the asset once instead of as many times as you added this asset. Depending on how many assets you use, this can save a lot of computing power/speed.

When using instances, it is possible to change the settings for all instances of the same object at the same time. This can be very useful for lighting when you do not want to change the settings for all lights individually.

The populate panel, that can be found at the bottom center of your screen and will appear on the right side of your screen, includes ways in which the user can more efficiently place certain assets.

The place tool is primarily used for static objects such as trees, rocks or grass. It is best to learn the way this tool works by testing each method for yourself.

• Select the method of your choosing (like “paint”)
• Place the objects you want to use in the rectangle that appears underneath the chosen method.
• Press the tool at the bottom left of the rectangle to draw where you want your objects to appear.
• “Scatter” places the objects onto an entire object.

Open the light properties by clicking on the light source.

Turn the shadows on by clicking on “Shadows” and check “Enable”.

The lighting color can be changed under “Color”.

The amount of light can be changed under “Main” with the Intensity slider.

Make sure that the “Enable” box under “Main” is checked, otherwise the light turns off.

• This setting is useful when you want to turn it off in a certain picture or video.

In your scene graph, select “Ambience”. This will open a menu with settings that are related to the environment (lighting, weather, etc.), your camera, render quality and effects. Make sure to play with settings from all tabs at the same time, there is no correct order.

Add an HDRI to your model by opening the library on the left of your screen, selecting HDRI environments, choosing an HDRI and dragging it into the model.

• The sky dome HDRI’s are under “skies” and only include a sky, in conterdiction to other HDRI’s that might include a forest, city or field.
• Using an HDRI allows you to have very accurate lighting as well as lots of possibilities regarding unique and dramatic sky domes.

In the ‘HDRI‘ menu, experiment with both the rotation and intensity settings. Adjusting the intensity is particularly crucial, as it plays an important role in achieving sufficient brightness in your render while maintaining high-quality lighting.

It is possible to change the weather and the season by changing the settings in the “Weather” tab. It is possible to render rain as well as snow. However, the rain particles turn off when the path tracer is turned on.

In the “Weather” tab, there is a slider that controls the height fog. This can be used to hide the horizon when it is visible in your model.

The “Natural Lighting” tab includes settings regarding special lighting. By increasing the sun’s intensity, you can make more light come from a certain location (the sun), while the ambient setting controls the base lighting in your entire scene.

Turn off Auto-exposure. Doing this gives you more control over the brightness of your renders.

• Normally, the Exposure should be around 0.

Under the “Lens” tab, you can find settings for the camera zoom as well as some other settings regarding the lens.

The focal length controls the zoom of your camera.

Turn Parallelism on. This setting makes lines from the bottom to the top of your screen lines truly straight. This is the industry standard for architectural visualizations.

Choose “Real Time” for a fast render in real time.

Choose “Path tracer” for a high-quality render with more accurate lighting.

• The path tracer is able to depict reflections much more accurately than the real time renderer. However, you trade computing time for accuracy. Rendering with the path tracer takes significantly more time, and not all computers are capable of doing this.

While having the Real time renderer enabled, enable “Lumen”. “Lumen” is a method that gets similar results to the path tracer, while using significantly less computing power. It is great for VR, videos, seeing changes to your settings fast or for computers that aren’t strong enough for the path tracer.

Open the “Media” tab at the bottom center of your screen.

Select “image”. This is the leftmost option at the top of the media menu.

Clicking the + icon will create an image with your current camera potion and ambience settings. If you change the camera position or ambience settings for this image, make sure to click on the “refresh” button that appears when you hover above the image that you’ve created.

It is possible to copy the ambience settings from one image to the next by clicking on the 3 dots that appear above the image when hovering over it and then selecting “copy ambience”. Now hover above the second image, click on the three dots and “paste ambience”.

Open the “Media” tab at the bottom center of your screen.

Select “video” from the top of the media menu.

Clicking the + icon will create a video. The first frame has your current camera potion and ambience settings. If you change the camera position or ambience settings for this image, make sure to click on the “refresh” button that appears when you hover above the image that you’ve created.

The video that plays, plays a path between the frames that you specify. You can specify the time that the video takes to move along this path above the frames.

It is possible to create different sections by clicking the camera with + icon at the center top of the media menu.

Play the video by pressing the “play” icon at the center top of the media menu.

It is possible to change the ambience settings for different frames.

Open the “Export” tab at the bottom center of your screen. The export menu will open on the right side of your screen.

On the + icons next to image, video, etc., select the images, videos., etc. that you want to export.

Select the file formats that you want to export.

• For images, .png is recommended.
• For videos, .mp4 is recommended.
• For personal preferences in postprocessing, experiment with different filetypes.

VR visualization in Twinmotion is quite easy. Visualizing in VR can be especially useful to quickly get a grasp of scale and feeling for your designs, as well as to convince others of your plans.

Connect the headset of your choosing BEFORE opening Twinmotion.

Select the “eye” icon at the top of your screen, right next to the Scene graph.

Select “VR” and put on your headset. Navigate using teleportation using your controllers.

Draw your objects by hand or digitally, remove the background, and save them as PNG files in a folder with a recognizable name. (It’s important that the image edges align with the object and that there’s no space between the object and the bottom edge of the image.)

Open your Twinmotion file and navigate to:

Place any character. 

Select the character and go to Properties. Click:

and select your custom image.

Adjust the X and Z scale percentages under XYZ to ensure the proportions of your object are correct.

Go to Scene, right-click on the object, give it a custom name, and click Add to User Library.

Navigate to:

where your object should now appear.

Make the Material Double-Sided: In Twinmotion, set the material to be visible on both sides of the surface. You can find this option under:

Accidentally zooming out too far or falling through an object in pedestrian mode can cause disorientation. Navigate to Scene, right-click on an object you want to go to and select Zoom to Selection (or press the shortcut key F). This will transport you to the selected object.

Version Management for Twinmotion Files

Save your Twinmotion files regularly as new versions (e.g., v1, v2, v3). This creates backups in case something goes wrong or if you’re unhappy with recent changes, allowing you to quickly revert to a previous version.

Substitution Table and Assets Folder

Keep all files that are used for the rendering in the same folder, including the rhino file, the Twinmotion file, the substitution table and all other dependencies. This way, it is easy to move your files to an external backup or different computer without losing data.