3D Model Imports in Twinmotion for Flexible Editing and Efficient Scene Organization

this lesson we are going to look at importing 3D models and the different ways to import and how that affects your working space. And before we get started on the model that we've currently been working in, let's again swap out this wood that we placed everywhere. Let's put on a ground texture.

If you go over to materials, click on ground, click on nature. These are all your various kind of grass and grounds. You can just get just a general kind of forest ground material.

Just drag that on so that way it's consistent. And then next, let's delete everything else besides the starting ground. We want to delete the starting base and then anything additional elements that we added.

For example,  we want to keep the folders that we created because those are nice kind of folders. But in within vegetation, let's delete the tree and then let's click this box and let's delete this box. And let's delete the chair.

Alright, so now let's look at different ways of importing. So from the toolbar on the left, we click on file, import. This is where you would get different elements that we can link the models to.

We can import straight geometry, link your models, SketchUp, Revit, Rhino. You can import other elements. For this case,  I just want to show just importing geometry.

If you click open, now we can choose the model to import in the starting database folder that we downloaded. Import the BIM 371 import test model. It is a SketchUp format.

You do not need to open SketchUp for this. Just import this directly into your Twinmotion model. So you click open.

So this opens the import options panel. This is where the key decision happens. How do you want Twinmotion to interpret the model? If you click on options and you click on this collapse, you'll see keep hierarchy or collapse by material or collapse all.

Collapse by hierarchy, this means that the original object structure from your modeling software, groups and layers are maintained. So your file comes in with the logical tree structure. This is perfect if you want to keep all your objects able to be isolated and move things around.

So you can isolate specific objects. You can move things around. You can also animate specific objects if you have them in there.

And editing is more flexible. If I collapse by material, this collapses objects into groups based on shared material names. So everything with the same material becomes one object in Twinmotion.

Editing geometry is limited because all the elements that are within the same material is all grouped together. This is great if you want to import really fast and not have a ton of layers and you're more focused on swapping out the materials than actually manipulating the model. So let's demonstrate how we do both.

So let's go do first collapse by hierarchy. As you can see, I have not put a folder for the 3D import. So I'm just going to place it just within here.

We're going to want once it's imported, we're going to want to drag that back into the 3D imports folder. These other options down here, full precision UVs. This is kind of fixing some of the map textures.

We want to keep that checked. Full precision normals. This improves the reflections on messages, but increases memory consumption.

Not something that I've really seen any much value. The up axis auto, unit version auto,  two-sided geometry. I always like the geometry to be two-sided just because of materials.

That come in. Sometimes with SketchUp, if it's the back of that material, it might be a different color or different material. So it could, it won't come in quite right.

So I like,  then from here I'll do import. So keep hierarchy is this first option. We'll do import.

And then this may take anywhere between five seconds to two minutes, depending on the size of your model. Okay. So the model imported, you can see down here that is this beam 3671.

And you can see that it is nowhere to be found. There it is. You have to kind of rotate around and kind of see where it's at.

That's the origin kind of area right here. And then here is the model that we imported. You can kind of can see here that it's like floating above the ground plane.

So there's a few things you can do. You can bring the model down, which if you ever were to like re-import the model, it'll go at the same spot. So then you have to like bring it down again.

I will rather prefer to bring the groundscape up. But let's not worry about that quite yet. Here, let's take a look at the folder structure for the import by hierarchy.

I'm going to drag this into my 3D imports. I'm going to rename this, right click, rename. And I'm going to do,  I'm going to get rid of all the title.

And I'm going to call this import by hierarchy. We can keep that what that looks like. So then if I was to open up this little arrow to expand the information, you can see that all of these elements are basically objects.

I was to click on this. So all of the glass pieces are objects. If I wanted to, you know, remove a piece of glass or modify it, this is a whole door.

If I wanted to modify and move the door or delete,  I can get rid of it. All kinds of things. And so all of this is like how the model is grouped.

So in the model, I'm assuming that this element was probably a component altogether. So it just brought the whole thing. If I don't want the whole thing, what I would do in the original 3D model is export it or explode it down to more specific elements.

I'm thinking if I wanted each of these panels to be individual and not a full door. If I wanted to like animate it,  it like rotates. I always have one door kind of rotate around the hinge versus here,  it's rotating about the center of that.

So again, with this, all of these materials,  if I click my eyedropper tool and see down here, and then if I open up my materials box,  you can see all these materials that imported and they're all linked together, right? So I have this material panel open here on the left. I go back to materials and let's say I choose stone and I choose some sort of exterior. Let me see if I can find an exterior stone.

Maybe I'll do brick. And then I scroll down and I go, maybe there's more cinder block. And I drag the cinder block material over here.

You can see everywhere where that white material was has been replaced with this. And you know, depending on how you modeled any interior elements that were modeled with that same material have been replaced with that as well. So it kind of gets a little tricky.

You want to make sure when you're doing any sort of 3D modeling outside of here, that you make sure that you're very specific of your materials and you are very specific with where you put them and especially like white, because it's hard to tell which surfaces are white. So a lot of times I will use like a bright color, like orange or something for the exterior. So I clearly know like this is going to be the material that's going to be swapped for that.

All right. So I'm going to collapse this folder and then turn off the visibility for this import by hierarchy. I'm going, this time I'm going to right click 3D imports.

I'm going to set this as my active container. Now when I import my new model, it will import within this folder. Now I want to show you what that looks like with importing by materials.

If I do import and go back to my open and click my import test model and click open. And now go to collapse by material. When I click import, all the objects with the same material becomes one object.

So all glass becomes one, all wood becomes one, all concrete. So you don't have as much flexibility, but your layer management will be a little bit more simpler. The trade-off with this version is you lose some flexibility.

You can't move a single chair or wall segment,  you can't isolate specific objects, and you can't hide components individually. So let's go import this and let's see what this looks like. So you can see that, you know, there are these materials auto underscore six.

All these have already been imported in the other one. So the question is, like, am I going to be utilizing the same material for each of those or do I want to have those be different? I'm going to have keep both so that way we have both options and apply to all. Click OK.

You see it duplicated each of those things. And now here it is. It's importing everything as individual materials.

If I was to now rename this one and right click rename and let's call this import by material. And then if I drag this down so I can see more than my layers and then I open up this box,  I can see that now each of these. Layers are set up by the actual material,  so it's a lot more simpler.

But you don't have as much control again if I was to I drop. This material here drag the cinder blocks. It will do the same thing on where I have those materials at so.

Regardless of how you import it. You want to make sure that your model outside is set up correctly. So to wrap up, use the import class by hierarchy when you want object level control.

Use class by materials when you want to group by the finishes. And then, you know, choose based on your editing needs. You're seeing complexity and workflow.

You can always reimport with different settings to test what works best. Or I'll see you in the next lesson.