Twinmotion hotfix 2020.2.3 significantly improves stability and user experience

With the new Twinmotion hotfix 2020.2.3 now live, we wanted to take you through some of the improvements that have been made to the software.

This is an exciting update for us—one that addresses a number of long-known issues and which marks a huge step forward in improving the Twinmotion’s stability and user experience.

Here, Twinmotion Senior Product Manager Raphael Pierrat and Lead Programmer Manuel Veit explain what’s in the update and why you should be excited too. 

Beyond bug busting

“This hotfix is about more than just fixing bugs—it’s a major improvement of the Twinmotion file format,” says Raphael. “The way a Twinmotion file is  saved, the way it’s opened, its robustness, and its reliability have been reviewed and corrected in order to provide increased stability.” 

Raphael goes on to explain that the work the team has done on the format not only increases stability, it also opens up Twinmotion to the Epic Games ecosystem, providing new avenues for communication and creative opportunities in the future.

A boost for user experience

“In this update, we wanted to focus on some of the main recurring issues users are facing and to provide a better overall user experience,” says Manuel, explaining that the team has concentrated its efforts on backward-compatibility issues. These issues led either to crashes during or after opening 2019 and previous 2020.2 files, or to unexpected consequences in Twinmotion—such as unexpected behavior of people/vehicles on paths. 

“To address this, we have improved our serialization and data interpretation layers so they are more robust,” he elaborates. The team has also worked on memory issues, which were mainly affecting painted vegetation—due to multithreading vegetation item generation—but which also affected some internal UI mechanisms.

Incremental updates offer prompt and reliable fixes

Last year, we implemented a system that enables us to push new small updates without the need for users to download Twinmotion from scratch again. “We've already fixed a large number of issues this way,” says Manuel. “Going forward, we’re increasing our efforts to bring you the safest and most reliable software.”

The Twinmotion team is only able to make improvements like these thanks to the valuable feedback it receives from the Twinmotion community. “Whether testing real cases, finding sticking points, validating flows, or increasing productivity, your feedback is precious to us,” says Raphael. “I’d like to say a big thank you to our Twinmotion Community for all your comments and passionate support.”