twinmotion import of and use of materials defined in revit

[dcarlsen8GY35]

Simple question. Does or can TM bring in materials set up / defined in a Revit model, including render images / files from the asset library and render them accurately  without use of the TM materials library? Or is everything to be rendered in TM a product of pretty much applying a TM material to virtually every object in the TM file ?

[RDAOU]

@dcarlsen8GY35 

The idea of rendering a model in twinmotion is to use the higher quality TM material assets. Technically speaking TM read the material definitions from Revit and maps them to its own material system (Parsing). TM engin also checks and upgrades any placeholder materials which are found lacking.

The idea is was/is to enhance the rendering capabilities not to go back to revits crapy assets 😄

[dcarlsen8GY35]

I get that. On the other hand I have a great deal of appearance images reflecting the exact materials used in my 13 acre project with over 20 linked building models. Currently it renders as marshmallows. What is the method for taking the path to all these library assets and having TM render them as created in Revit without substitution ?

[RDAOU]

@dcarlsen8GY35 

Honestly, I have never thought of keeping the revit quality material untouched before but thats probably because we do not have revit material assets as good as yours. Nonetheless, the import and keep original is there and I believe you should not have a problem rendering using (almost all)** the Revit material as imported if you:

• Use the Datasmith Exporter to import model as .udatasmith into twinmotion (this preserves Revit material)
• Adjust import settings in Twinmotions to
  1. Collapse by Material: This retains the material assignment
  2. Keep Original Material: This is the option to avoid substitution (as long as TM is able to process the assets you assigned in Revit)**
• Ensure that all material in revit is properly configured in terms of textures and appearance for TM to process it. (preferably PBR textures
• Avoid Generic asset Type and use specific material based assets

Why (almost all)**, thats because after some trial and error exports, it seemed to me that sometimes TM reassigns/enhances some or a few material anyways and in most cases it happens when using the Generic Asset type in Revit. The material would look somewhat the same but also somewhat different than anticipated. And since the revit material libraries in hand (ours and from consultants) uses lots of generic material in the library, I did not dig deeper into preserving Revit materials.

But again I am neither and expert rendering wizard nor am I the person rendering stuff in the office. Maybe an expert renderer on a twinmotion forum has a different opinion