Jesus Carbajal Paxi, a power user since the early days of Twinmotion and two-time top 10 finalist in previous challenges, was crowned the winner with his incredible animation of a break-dancing crash test dummy.
Custom animation
Jesus used Mixamo for this set of planned animations, which had to be small but repeatable, similar to a loop, and also follow Adobe’s application recommendations. Among the chosen animations were:
Jump
Editing
Once the animations were downloaded in FBX format, Jesus imported them into 3ds Max. To import the animated object, he needed to have each frame populated with a different object which, when joined together, created the animation. For example, the first scene, of the jumping mannequin, has 30 frames.
To streamline the workflow, Jesus used a free 3ds Max script “mass_exporter_v1_6.” This enabled him to export each independent frame with a single click.
For the first scene, 30 objects were exported. The same process was carried out for each scene.
Preparation in Twinmotion
Animated objects
Once the composition was defined, Jesus inserted all the objects into Twinmotion, which preserved the materials of the first object. He also added complementary elements such as chairs, tables, and plants.
For the first scene, featuring 30 frames of the mannequin jumping, only the first object was turned on and the other 29 were turned off. For the second frame, the second object was turned on and the others were turned off. To get the one-second animation, this process was repeated until Jesus had 30 cameras. This is because Twinmotion exports animations at 30 frames per second.
To complete the animation, Jesus carried out the same process for all the other scenes, adding a total of more than 300 cameras.
Rendering
Instead of using a 3D-modeled environment for his interior scene, which would have meant a longer render time, Jesus opted for an interior HDRI. This drastically decreased the render time as the lighting washes over the entire scene from all sides. This approach suited his intention of showing the mannequin performing custom movements, rather than presenting a perfectly modeled environment.
For the challenge, Jesus used 64 samples and four bounces, resulting in a render time of around 75 minutes. He notes that while using a 3D-modeled environment offers more freedom for the use of cameras, HDR, because it uses a defined measure, limits the use of cameras to prevent distorted or out-of-scale backgrounds.
This breakdown of Jesus’ workflow is a prime example of how creators are using Twinmotion’s real-time technology to bring their ideas to life. A long-time user of Twinmotion, Jesus found the tool easy to learn from the get go. He said: “The learning curve was really short. It only took a couple of weeks to learn the interface and discover Twinmotion’s features.
“The best feature of Twinmotion, and my favorite, is the Path Tracer rendering, which considerably improves the quality of images and videos, significantly reducing processing time. Another favorite feature is the interoperability with Quixel and Sketchfab, which simplifies and reduces search times for libraries, surfaces, and other scene composition elements.”
Check out the top 10 finalists for the ‘Sketchfab in Motion’ Community Challenge here: