We’re excited to announce that Twinmotion 2023.2 is now available for commercial and educational use, as well as in our free Community Edition, where you’ve already had access to the 2023.2 preview releases. Here’s a round-up of the key new features in this release. Plus, stay tuned for some news about the Twinmotion support community.

 

Lumen real-time GI

 

Topping the list of highly requested new features in this release is Lumen, Unreal Engine 5’s groundbreaking dynamic global illumination and reflections system. Lumen enables indirect lighting to adapt on the fly to changes to direct lighting or geometry—for example, changing the sun’s angle with the time of day or opening an exterior door. It brings new levels of realism to real-time applications, and enables you to render gorgeous stills and videos with close to path-traced quality, but in a fraction of the time. 

 

We know you've been waiting for Lumen ever since it was revealed in UE5, and we’re very excited to be able to get it into your hands with this release.

 

Animated file import (Early Access)

 

Another feature that’s been high on many of your wishlists is the ability to import animated FBX, glTF, and GLB files to create more advanced, bespoke, and believable experiences. Twinmotion 2023.2 offers Early Access to our support for exactly that, so you can start testing out workflows and sending us your feedback. The feature enables you to use your own animations, and to leverage animated files from Sketchfab. (Talking of which, you’ll be pleased to hear there’s now an option to keep the hierarchy on importing Sketchfab assets!)

 

So far, you can bring in both static mesh and skeletal mesh animations, choose between playing them through once or looping them, delay the start of playback, and trim the in and out points. For skeletal objects that have several animations, you can also choose which animation to play. There are still a number of limitations (hence the Early Access designation), and we’ll continue to develop and refine this feature in future releases.

 

Adobe Substance 3D material support

 

Next up, Twinmotion 2023.2 offers the new ability to import Adobe Substance 3D parametric materials in the SBSAR file format and store them in the Twinmotion library; these could be materials you’ve created yourself in Substance Designer, or ones from any of the many material libraries available in this format.

 

All exposed parameters are available to edit in the Twinmotion Properties panel—for example, you could separately change the stitching color and the main color on a piece of fabric, and adjust the stitch length. Textures are generated on the fly when tweaks are made. 

 

Automotive White Studio template

 

If you’re one of the increasing number of people using Twinmotion for automotive visualization, you’ll want to explore the new White Studio template, which offers an easy way to kickstart your projects. Like the other templates, it contains a number of predefined shots; simply replace the stock asset with your model and you’re ready to go. 

 

You’ll find it on the new Home panel we introduced in 2023.1.2, which enables you to easily find and open the scenes you're working on, create new scenes from templates, stay informed with the latest Twinmotion news and projects, and access learning resources and tutorials, including the demo scenes.

 

Enhanced scene authoring

 

This release offers two new features that will make authoring your scene faster and easier, and who doesn’t like that?

 

First off, you can now paint and scatter far more asset types, including Sketchfab, Quixel, User Library, and most of the Twinmotion library assets, so you can dress your scene in record time. Previously, this was limited to just the vegetation section of the Twinmotion library.

 

And if you’ve ever struggled to position lights or shadow-casting objects that are not in the camera frame of your final media—forcing you to constantly jump back and forth between the Media tab thumbnail and your viewport—we think you’ll like the new ability to preview that media camera view while editing the scene in a second, live view. 

 

And there’s more…

 

Also new is support for Local exposure, which mimics the way your eyes react to different lighting conditions, preserving details in shadows and highlights. It’s especially useful for challenging high-dynamic-range scenes, for example ones that include both dark interiors and bright exteriors in the same view.

 

Meanwhile, enhancements to existing features include path-traced transparency for water materials, improved weather particles for more realistic rainy and snowy scenes, and an optimized clear glass material for faster rendering.

 

And last but not least, new WebVR support for Panorama Sets uploaded to Twinmotion Cloud means that your stakeholders anywhere in the world can launch and navigate them with full immersion from tethered or untethered VR headsets.

 

For details on all of the improvements in Twinmotion 2023.2, see the  full release notes . 

 

Get started today!

 

If you purchased Twinmotion within the last 12 months, you can download Twinmotion 2023.2 Commercial Edition from your Epic Games launcher as a free upgrade. If you purchased your commercial license more than one year ago, you can upgrade to Twinmotion 2023.2 from any previous release for $199 USD*, which includes all subsequent upgrade releases for one year. Not sure when you purchased? Log in to your Epic Games account and check the  license page ; we’ll let you know if you’re eligible.

 

If you’ve yet to get started, check out the  license options , which include a free Community Edition for non-commercial use and for trying out new features.

 

We hope you enjoy this release! 

 

Twinmotion support community news

 

The  Epic Developer Community  (EDC) is the new hub for all Epic ecosystem tools, including Unreal Engine, Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN), MetaHuman, and Capturing Reality, and we are gradually transitioning the Twinmotion support community there too. It’s already where you’ll find the latest  Twinmotion learning tools . It’s a great place to grow your knowledge and learn from your peers. 

 

With this release, new Twinmotion community discussions are moving to the EDC, where you’ll also be able to access a form to contact support should you need to report a bug or licensing/installation issue, or request a refund. Starting today, all discussions that get posted on the  Twinmotion Help site  will be redirected to the respective topic page on the EDC. 

 

The Twinmotion Help site will remain open until the end of 2023, at which point it will become read-only. You will have two weeks from that date to copy/save any content that you would like to retain; at the end of that two-week period, the site will be archived.

 

We look forward to seeing you all on the Epic Developer Community.