Lamps and Lights on Twinmotion 2019 LiveSync with Archicad 21 and 22

[Anonymous]

I did a test today, for my end thesis project in college. The Archicad project has a somewhat complex ( as in, would be very hard to redo if needed and somewhat undesirable, because in a more complex design it could make it very work intensive to redo lighting each time something changes on Archicad and I need to perform a presentation ) lighting layout, the lights are very specific, they play the role as washers and floor lighting, and much of it is set for mood. Some are Archicad native lamps, others are imported BIM lamps, and all work fine on Archicad, where in Cinerender it is all set and perfect.

For presentation, I tried to test TwinMotion 2019, and it seems the Live Connection, both on Archicad 21 and Archicad 22, the lights are not sent to TwinMotion. Mind you, the lamps are sent... but I could not find ( perhaps newbie problem as I am still new to the interface ) where to "Turn On" the lights. 😕 Did anyone have a similar experience, or found a solution?

I'm adding the Cinerender file as a reference to how lighting is working properly on Archicad 22.

I tried a few Google Searches regarding "Archicad Twinmotion Light" and "Archicad Twinmotion Lamp Export" but so far no luck. I cannot find if I am doing something wrong, or simply the lights are not part of the sync.

Thank you all in advance, if anyone knows the answer I'd be really thankful.

[Nuge]

Try Enscape much better option than Twinmotion

https://enscape3d.com/

[Anonymous]

Thank you Nuge, I'll keep that software in mind for evaluation later.

At present, I am focused on using and fully evaluating Twinmotion. I'd just like to know if lighting information is lost on the Archicad -> Twinmotion sync process. Or if not, where it can be accessed, as documentation and manuals for Twinmotion is proving to be hard to find.

[jclewis]

I don't believe that it is possible - at least, I have not been able to sync lights between Archicad and Twinmotion 2018. I haven't tried 2019 yet.

[Anonymous]

Thank you James. I am coming to terms of the lights not coming along in the project, and trying to figure out how to make "washer" floor lamps on Twinmotion. It is a bit frustrating, because the lighting design is a part of the BIM process... and if I will spend 4 hours getting close to 50 lamps redone now, imagine if I were doing an airport design as a friend of mine is currently undertaking in Revit ... last time we talked he is working on thousands of lamps, redoing all that for a presentation would be a nightmare when you think the Sync could just convert Archicad lights to Twinmotion light objects... 😕

[Erwin Edel]

Zero experience with Twinmotion, but I used to work with Artlantis Render.

This basically is the workflow: you add the lighting (effects) in the external render program.

The ArchiCAD lights you are referring to are either lamp objects (with fixtures) that are very crude for rendering light (as in have severely limited parameters to set up) or the more advanced 'light sources', which are catered towards getting all the fancy effects out of Cinerender, but do not have any 3D model for a fixture. I don't think Twinmotion will support converting either of these, since they have to support a fairly large number of different sources (revit, archicad, sketchup, etc etc). Rather they, indeed, expect you to make use of their lighting effects instead.

I would focus on a 'storyboard' of sorts first: which parts of the building will you show in the presentation. In your example of an airport, it is unlikely you will show all of those lights. For wide shots showing everything, the render times would be rediculous and you could achieve most of the same look by simplifying the lighting layout. For detailed shots, focus instead on what is in the shot.

Interior rendering especially can take a long time and more so if the computer has to calculate a lot of lights that add very little to scene.

Personal taste here, but a montage of several quick and short flythrough clips is more engaging than one large tour of the whole building. This means you only need to set up lights for those few scenes.

Try an approach where you make a 'base' level of light in the scene and add only the spot lights and such that really need to be shown as visible light. You can still have the fixtures and can add a glow effect to a glass surface to 'fake' the look of them emitting light.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for the input Erwin, and that is very close to what I did in the end. Since this is a very small project, and I wanted to have the walk through done, I ended up replacing all lights, using the lamps as objects, and setting them. There is still some adjusting to do, but it will work.

When I mention the importing, is because for example, I was working on exporting to Rhino and using VRay. The lights were indeed exported, but I had to redo all textures for VRay textures. The same was done on Twinmotion, but I started wondering about workflow. Because nothing is perfect, but it is good to find good ways of doing things and tools that help the day to day

Yes, on a big project such as an airport, the presentation would most likely be done in smaller portions, even smaller portions of the model itself, never importing the whole model in one single go. But one of the best uses of Twinmotion I found and want to use it for, is verification. To check if "things will look as I hope they will", so, more of a "day to day" role. If BIM lights have an IES parameter, Twinmotion could use it. For example, when I used BIM component lamps, I went into archicad, took the IES file from the element inside the library, exported, imported into Twinmotion and it worked.

But it is mostly a wishlist item. Before architecture I was a software developer, and I'm quite experient on how much work software takes to evolve. But now as an architect, I see Twinmotion ( and Lumion ) with value way more as a day to day tool ( a VERY expensive one ) because I was impressed on how it helped see the design very fast. Even if not as a photo realistic render, as a good enough one

My impression is overall positive, but I think this would be a wishlist item. Because as far as having to work with several software, well, that is their business, to work with several software seamlessly. A wall in SketchUp and in Archicad and in Revit are not that different and not that similar. There will always be internal parameters and internal library conversions happening. As far as something I'd like to see very soon, this is one that made me a bit sad it doesn't happen, as I felt it would be very natural to expect it to.

[Karl Griffith]

I have found that the sync with ArchiCAD does not bring in the lights, but if I export from ArchiCAD to Artlantis, then export out of Artlantis to Twinmotion, I do get the lights.


But you wat to make sure the number of lights is the minimal number you need, as they definitely slow things down significantly. (I had far too many in my file!)

[Anonymous]

Thank you so much Karl