AC29 Plugin Timing for Twinmotion etc

[architecturegeek]

I know a few Graphisoft folks peruse the forums so I'm going to drop some questions here regarding the twinmotion plugin process around each year's ArchiCAD release. 

Who is responsible for creating the plugin? Is this wholly on Epic's plate or on Graphisoft's?
Does Epic have a developer connection to Graphisoft? Do they receive pre-release versions of AC? Or are the having to wait for the public release? 

What is the cause of the hold-up every. single. year. with the twinmotion plugin?

This product was pitched BY GRAPHISOFT as a trusted solution for realtime visualization and yet it seems the two teams do not speak to one another at all? We're seeing all other supported software with twinmotion connection receiving updated plugins with their releases within weeks of launch and yet for ArchiCAD we see an updated plugin 6+ months on average after release. 

The currently situation is untenable and confusing, when I've posed this question to either company (Epic's offices are nearby) I have been met with shrugs and finger pointing. 
I understand that the partnership is over but the current situation appears to be antagonistic and is actively harming the customer base of both products. 

Operating system used: Mac Apple Silicon

[Emre Senoglu]

The plugin is developed by Epic - but I'm not sure whether if they get a pre release so they can start work earlier or not. Here's a thread I found on the TM forum: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/availability-direct-link-plugin-for-the-new-archicad-29/2663803/6 Unfortunately, there is no answer on the subject for now. It is one of the main reasons I'm sticking with 27/28 for now. 

[figge]

Isn't this one the plugin for Archicad 29..??

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/datasmith/plugins 

[Lingwisyer]

That would be for saving out datasmith files, which can then be imported into TM, but is a more combersome workflow to Livelink.

[mikas]

I thought the livelink also came with udatasmith plugin. It would be a palette called "Datasmith" found through palettes/menus, command not a visible menu in menubar like it used to be in the early days. But I haven't tried it for AC29 yet. Downloaded 29 and udatasmith yes, but haven't installed and tried either of them.

[Laszlo Nagy]

This is just a guess on my part, but I think this could simply be a timing issue. The last time the Archicad plugin page was updated was September 30, which was the day Twinmotion 2025.2 was released:

https://www.twinmotion.com/en-US/plugins/archicad

Archicad 29 was released about a week later. So maybe Epic Games just did not want to wait for the Archicad 29 release, and they will release the Ac29 plugin with the next Twinmotion update.

[Emre Senoglu]

The AC29 plugin is out now: https://www.twinmotion.com/en-US/plugins

[architecturegeek]

I think the issue is that the last two AC releases have resulted in a 6 plus month wait for the TW plugin to support. Certainly there are some scheduling conflicts between the update cycle in each ecosystem but plugins seem to rollover very quickly for Autodesk and other partners. If we're seeing a new AC every year roughly in August and we're paying our SSA agreement in May each year it's slightly frustrating to then wait to use that upgrade until December or January. 1st world problems and all that but it does have us feeling out of sync. 

I should note that there was a similar lag a decade ago with Maxwell Render, their poor dev told us that he always had to wait for the public release of AC because Graphisoft would not work with him. I assume that's not the case here just publicly griping in the hopes it shifts someone higher up. 

[architecturegeek]

Yep. Which is about a month faster than last year, so progress?