I don't know if this is a bug, or if there is a different workflow available, but we're using the Revit direct link to bring an interior project into Twinmotion 2023.1. The Revit model has recessed and accent lighting using IES files as the light source, and after setting up the scene, these lights have been adjusted to evenly\realistically light the rooms per the scene's exposure in TM, which is a bit meticulous.
The problem is this: every time a change is made in Revit to materials, geometry, etc. and has to be synchronized with TM, the lights in TM immediately revert back to their default values and all that work is lost. This happens using the direct link, but also when manually updating the datasmith file using any of the options available - ie. even "Reset materials on selection" resets the lights as well? I've tried taking this back to TM 2022.2.3 and the same thing happens. Am I missing something here?
When setting up the Direct Link connection between Revit and Twinmotion, you should see an import option called Light Settings. Can you try changing that to Set all values to TM default or Set Intensity to 300lm to see if that resolves this lighting issue you're experiencing? Or do the lighting values still get reset after each auto-sync?
I apologize, I've been a bit swamped and had to rebuild the scene in Lumion to meet a deadline - haven't been able to test this out. I'll try setting this up again to test it hopefully this week - although I think the option I used initially was "Set Intensity to 300lm".
Allright I got a chance to retry this - I was actually using the "Use Original" option for the lights when the import was first set up. I had Revit lights with an IES spot light source in them, they came in rotated sideways so I had to use "Replace Object" on them to get them pointing back downwards. Reloading the Datasmith link would cause the lights to revert back to the original IES with incorrect rotation and reset the intensities (and possibly other settings like temperature?)
I just tried using the "Set all values to TM default" instead. The lights came in as omni's, so I used "Replace Object" again and adjusted the intensities. Reloading the datasmith link causes the lights to revert back to omnis allthough this time the intensities stayed where they were.
Apologies for the delayed response on this. If you're still experiencing this light import issue on the latest version of Datasmith (5.1.1) and have updated to the most recent hotfix of Twinmotion 2023.1 PR2 released yesterday, then please create a bug report here so we can log this behavior:
Giving another update on this one. I was able to see that this behavior still persists on 2023.1 PR2. So I'll be logging a bug report for this to be fixed in a future version of Twinmotion.
A workaround for this would be to have two Datasmith sources in your Twinmotion project:
A direct-link source to your Revit project; when setting this up, select Process: Meshes, so we don't bring in any lights.
A .udatasmith file source exported from your Revit project; when adding this, we'll only Process: Lights, so we only bring in the lights from the AC project.
That way, you can change your Revit geometry whenever you'd like without having the local light changes being reset every time. Once you make the desired changes to your lighting properties, select all lights in your scene graph and select Add to User Library. That way, if your lights ever get accidentally reset, you can choose those lights, select Replace Object, and select the customized lighting from your User Library; that should save you some time.
Thanks so much for logging the bug report. I'm not sure if this related, but there was a similar issue with plant's size / growth resetting on every file open - could you log a bug report for this as well? From the other discussions here it seems like it's still happening.
But thanks again for the workaround - that should help for right now. And the UI you just made changes to Preview 2 are great! Love being able to get to all material's texturemaps at once, or rendersettings etc. without as much menu diving.
To my knowledge, this was fixed in the most recent version. I wasn't able to reproduce this in 2023.1 PR2. But if you're still having vegetation properties being reset upon file opening, feel free to create a bug report here and include your project file so we can reproduce it locally:
I'm just starting to get back to Twinmotion to test things out ahead of before committing a full project to it - We've moved over to Twinmotion for Revit 2023.1 and are seeing some different bugs going on with the Lighting.
Using Revit 2024, Direct Link to Twinmotion, the very first import won't bring the light sources in correctly - they all end up hundreds of feet above the structure and clustered together on top of eachother. Is the workaround you mentioned a few posts back the only way around this? We were going to need to make changes to the lighting plans at some point and were hoping there was a better way to go about updating TM -
Do you mind creating a case for this? I want to dig into your setup a bit further to diagnose what's the issue here. But don't want your project to be on a public forum.
If you could create a case and provide screenshots, or better yet, project files and specific reproduction steps, we can help resolve this issue for you.
I created a case for it + the "light reset on update" issue ( case 00567557) and got some replies back from Raghib, you may want to look up what he's written. Will send some files out to him at that case number shortly.