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Thinking of switching to Unreal from Lumion


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Greetings all,

Could someone here let me know their experience with the datasmith plugin? I have been using lumion, via formZ to Sketchup and was thinking at first to upgrade to Lumion 2023. Then, looked at the datasmith plugin and wondered how it compared. 

I'd appreciate your insight and recommendations.

 

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I have limited experience Allan but I can say it's been very good. For larger projects I export to Twinmotion by layers which come in very well, then I have control if there are any changes to the design by just bringing in the layers which are altered. The rest stay in the TM model as before such as entourage.

Materials are exported from Fz into TM very well including bump maps etc.

TM 2023 is awesome, the interface is much improved.

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hello alan
We have quite a strong experience here
In addition we actively participate in the Beta community of Twinmotion

Currently we use FZ 9 exclusively for the Datasmith export function
We work with FZ 6.7.3
We export in groups and the file structure is perfectly converted

Material conversion is really basic
The texture mapping is transferred with the color map
For the rest you have to forget
Materials need to be rebuilt in TM
We have developed a user library in which we find most of our usual materials
For the others it is necessary to work them in TM

We asked the question but a better conversion of materials depends on the plugin which is developed by ADS
The Epic game team told us that they wanted to get in touch with ADS without any feedback from them...
(It's true that it should be more of a priority to develop 2d software on mac.. in short, I don't want to argue...)

That said, and therefore apart from this problem of converting materials, the plugin does its job perfectly to convert geometry.

We can dream of a plugin that will integrate a direct link but it is probably not planned before 2050

We are already happy not to have to go through another software like SKP
so let's not complain!

And now we have arrived in paradise: TWINMOTION
The software is becoming a leading platform for rendering architecture.
It obviously offers both a real-time engine and a path tracer that rivals the best solutions like Vray

But what is in the process of revolutionizing the software is its library ecosystem which is already huge and which is going in the times that follow, even more so with the FAB platform.

Other developments are coming with the integration of LUMEN which will give TM a totally revolutionary real-time lighting engine (already present on the unreal 5)


Frankly Allan I can only encourage you to migrate to TM because the software is already huge but will still experience decisive developments!

If you need do not hesitate to contact us by email

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22 hours ago, jldaureil said:

In addition we actively participate in the Beta community of Twinmotion

Thanks for the input here. Just wondering if there has been any talk of TM being able to import saved views from Fz? I mentioned on this forum before that it would be a game changer for me. I currently match views in Fz and render in Maxwell for photomontages so if TM could do that I'd go fully with TM.

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Thank you Jldaureil,

I definitely want to try twinmotion. I love the fact that it ray trace-like technology.  In fact I am trying to download the installer by running the Epic Games Launcher, but I get the attached error. Tried on two different machines and got the same error.

Has anyone run into this issue?

self update failed.jpg

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Hi Santa,

Thank you. I tried your links, ran the executables, but the problem persists. I find it odd that Epic Games uses this convoluted procedure to download a trial version. I am about to give up and pay a whole lot more for Lumion. 

I tried D5. It is a good renderer, but I find the images a little "too clean". That alone makes them not photorealistic. I'm hoping I find a way to try twinmotion. I know they have ray trace technology. I miss the old days when software installation was simpler.

I have been using Vray, and I really like their ray trace output. But, having a lot of entourage on my renderings makes Vray impractical. FormZ slows to a crawl with a lot of geometry.

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That's strange that it won't install. I have it installed on four machines without a hitch (2 iMacs, 1 MacBook Pro and 1 Windows 11 machine). Maybe uninstall the installers and try again?

Try to solve the install error, it'll be worth it.

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Thanks for the push Des.

I finally got it to install, and you're right, it was worth it. I really like the feel of it, and the rendering quality seems equivalent to Vray. (Maxwell reigns supreme. But who has the time? 😁).

I think I found my next rendering and animation software!

Thank you all for the help!

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allan

Epic Games Launcher auto-update error SU-PQR1603 usually occurs when you try to install or run the launcher on your PC while playing Fornite, for example. In order to fix this problem, you will need to make sure to run the launcher as administrator.

Are u sure you are launching a admin ?

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/epic-games-error-code-su-pqr1603-or-su-pqe1223

Edited by jldaureil
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Yes, was launching like administrator the whole time. On my laptop, I DO have a problem running executables. My work around is to logging into the adminitrator account. So after installing the C++ executables, and logging into windows under Administrator, I was finally able to install.

So far TM looks very promising for me... I still need to figure out how to either use my own backdrop image for rendering or having the background be an alpha channel. Also, does anyone know if TM has its own material for 3d grass? I don't want to have to paint 3d grass with a brush every time.

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  • 2 weeks later...

FYI. I ended up coughing up a lot of dough and getting the Lumion 2023. Features that sold me: 1- Raytracing. 2- Auto set up of camera at eye level and level. 3-Photo matching. 4-Channels. 5-Tons of entourage. Especially having a quite a few of desert plants, which I use a lot. 5. Easy and powerful. 6. Tons of geometry does not affect performance much.

D5 came in second, and if D5 had a some of the above features, I'd be sold on it. 

Twinmotion seemed a bit clunky when previewing with ray trace. Also, no channels?! No photo matching. No auto eye level set up. 

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Thanks allan for that info on your final choice. Photomatch is so important. Also, as I attempt to proceed into Unreal from TM, I've discovered a very inhospitable app to designers, a steep learning curve, and I've started to run into RTX video cards that overheat and crash the machine, frame tearing, needing to render at 60 fps, and other bizarre issues like having to use visual scripting just to make shaders. I am am going to look at Lumion while I continue with TM for the moment.

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Interesting stuff here.

Anyone played with Enscape?  Since Chaos bought them they have been pushing it closer to VRay's integration and the ease of switching between the two on the same project, looks compelling.

https://blog.enscape3d.com/unified-visualization-workflow-with-enscape-and-v-ray

I wonder if this could be added to future VRay for FormZ if it's just a sub-product?

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