Direct Link to Twinmotion resets all my materials each time.

[line-weight]

24 minutes ago, Dave Donley said:

 

Some operations (editing plug-in object parameters, reshaping walls) will reset the material overrides.

 

 

Is this something we can hope to see the end of, in the next SP release?

[Flair-Studio]

I am feeling a bit frustrated that direct link to twinmotion keeps resetting most of the materials and also, more often than not, when I close both VW and T.M the direct link breaks and I have to re-import the hole model again...!

 

I am running VW 2022 -SP3 on T.M 2022.1.2

[Steve Kennedy]

It's 2024. This issue persists for me even with all the latest updates for TM and VWX. 

[rami]

This issue still stands in twinmotion 2023 every time there's an update in Revit some of the materials in TM go back to their default. 
And I need the direct link to be able to change shapes or add elements, any solution to that? 

[line-weight]

The fact this issue's been left unfixed for so long has led me to give up on TM. Glad I didn't invest too much time into learning it.

[zoomer]

5 hours ago, line-weight said:

Glad I didn't invest too much time into learning it.

 

Me too.

I just read about its progress here on the forum.

I just read something that modifying a Wall would result in a new UUID

and therefore come over with the old VW Material.

[Flair-Studio]

I found out that it is the changes to parametric objects (mostly walls) that twinmotion doesn't like. If you update just a 3d symbol in VW, the direct link works just fine.

 

Having said that, Twinmotion has its advantages (very easy learning curve, interesting libraries especially for plants, environment, making short movies, etc) and disadvantages (quality of renderings not excellent, lighting is quite limited, raytracing is not compatible with Mac users, materials can be edited up to a point, etc).

 

For professional renderings I still use Vray, but then it takes a lot of time because there isn't (UNFORTUNATELY) a direct export from VW to Vray... I find Vray superior to many real time rendering engines which came out lately and I really like the way it renders the lights.

 

Hope this helps!

[zoomer]

2 hours ago, Flair-Studio said:

I found out that it is the changes to parametric objects (mostly walls) that twinmotion doesn't like. If you update just a 3d symbol in VW, the direct link works just fine.

 

Good to know.

 

 

2 hours ago, Flair-Studio said:

Twinmotion has its advantages (very easy learning curve, interesting libraries especially for plants, environment, making short movies, etc) and disadvantages

 

Exactly that.

 

I am fine with the quality.

Easy spreading Entourage would have more impact for my kind of work.

 

My problem is mainly Epic and its Apps in general.

Terrabytes in size, that Game Launcher and stuff which doesn't make me

feel comfortable with it.

 

I also really liked VRAY. Had it for Modo and C4D.

But they went Subscription only and there terrible licensing system.

Escaped Modo and C4D some years ago too.

 

I liked Escape but that got first Subscription only and then Chaos Company.

D5 is Windows only ....

[Flair-Studio]

14 hours ago, zoomer said:

I also really liked VRAY. Had it for Modo and C4D.

But they went Subscription only and there terrible licensing system.

Escaped Modo and C4D some years ago too.

 

My Vray is on perpetual, the only problem is the complicated export process from VW which is OK when you don't expect many changes to the model but can be a pain if many exports are required. In fact, I tend to use Vray for final renderings where I could charge a premium

 

[zoomer]

BTW;

it meant "Enscape" not Escape,

but ma out of edit post time frame ....

 

Yes, no more sure but AFAIR my Modo VRAY was perpetual but

deprecated at one point (?), VRAYforC4D was perpetual with

Upgrades but AFAIR went Subscription only when it went to chaos group.

 

Even C4D still kept perpetual licenses and upgrade.

I just ignored it, as I only needed the C4D Visualize and they deprecated

these lower versions and I would have had to go to double costs of

the Ultimate/Designer version with all these Mograph tools I don't need.

 

VW C4D Exchange worked great for me for many years. I also set my projects

up for VRAY in parallel. Just that my clients did not care much about plus

in quality but fast renders to present design versions to force client decisions.

Beside I really liked to work with VRAY Cameras, Materials and Lights.

It was just a bit slower than C4D Physical Renderer for simpler Material and

geometry setups.

 

I am not very familiar with Datasmith and did not really test (lossless) Exchange

but fine that it is available in VW. I just noticed that replacing my 3D plants

with TM plants made them switch Z and Y axes. Same for some random parts

of my geometry.

Otherwise I had pretty good VW Export results with C4D or FBX, as long as

no Exchange is necessary.

[line-weight]

9 minutes ago, zoomer said:

Just that my clients did not care much about plus

in quality but fast renders to present design versions to force client decisions.

 

Most of the time, at the moment I just use shaded view for this.

 

It has its limitations but it saves a huge amount of time and avoids the problem that arises when renders are "too" realistic, that the client takes every detail literally even when the design is at a preliminary stage.

[zoomer]

I also used Shaded (w/o Lines + HL) where ever possible for things

out of VW like Elevations.

The Renders were usually done in C4D with Indrirect Illumination,

n*Cameras with individual geometry and exposure settings via Take Manager.

So Batch Rendering while dinner, usually 5-12 minutes per frame.

[JW_04]

Is the general consensus that this issue will persist and there is no hope of VW or EpicGames correcting the materials reset after DataSync refresh? Have experienced this issue with VW 2024 and stopped using DataSync due to this, will nothing have changed in VW 2025?

[line-weight]

41 minutes ago, JW_04 said:

Is the general consensus that this issue will persist and there is no hope of VW or EpicGames correcting the materials reset after DataSync refresh?

That's my conclusion. And if this issue has not been fixed with any urgency, then even if it eventually is, the worry is that some other thing will come up and the same will happen.

 

It's sadly just another instance of a new shiny thing being introduced and then abandoned.

[Robert Strauss]

On 12/11/2024 at 6:32 AM, JW_04 said:

Is the general consensus that this issue will persist and there is no hope of VW or EpicGames correcting the materials reset after DataSync refresh? Have experienced this issue with VW 2024 and stopped using DataSync due to this, will nothing have changed in VW 2025?

In my experience, material substitution worked intermittently in VW2024 and completely stopped working in VW2025. Also effective with VW2025, Twinmotion was no longer able to retain the DirectLink file location published from Vectorworks. With 2025, if Twinmotion is open and Direct Link is published from VW, Twinmotion captures the location of the Direct Link. However, when the linked Twinmotion file is saved and reopened, the Direct Link location has been lost. This is worse behavior than I experienced with VW2024. When I override the default Direct Link location folder in both VW2025 and Twinmotion to a common folder, Twinmotion is at least now able to find and refresh from the Direct Link if VW is not running.

 

This makes me think the problem is that Twinmotion has updated the Direct Link default file location, and Vectorworks simply needs to perform some very simple maintenance to match the current Twinmotion Direct Link default file location.