With the Parallax windows in Twinmotion, you can accelerate your workflow and instantly add realistic-looking 3D interior spaces to the buildings in your architectural scenes.
Instead of modeling building interiors or adding objects and lights to the rooms in Twinmotion, drag the parallax windows from the library into the scene and place them behind windows or openings, or directly onto building facades.
The parallax windows in the Twinmotion Library — located in the Objects > Parallax windows category — depict various kinds of residential, gym, and office interiors, as well as retail interiors provided courtesy of wParallax.
You can customize them, create your own custom interiors and save them as parallax window textures, or import parallax window textures that you purchase from compatible third-party vendors.
Using parallax windows instead of modeling interiors or populating them with assets in Twinmotion also lightens the rendering process as each parallax window is composed of a single plane and a texture.
This page provides an overview of parallax windows and explains how to add parallax windows to your scenes. For information on the properties of parallax windows, see Parallax Windows Reference.
About Parallax Windows
Parallax windows are pre-made interior scenes composed of a plane and a texture applied to the plane. The parallax effect provided by the texture gives the illusion of depth to the interiors, even when you move the camera around the scene.
Each parallax window uses two textures:
A daylight texture to display the room during daylight hours.
A nighttime texture to display the room during nighttime hours.
The texture is in the shape of a square and is divided into nine equal parts using a 3 x 3 grid. Each square represents one aspect of the interior.
The four outer corners of the texture (1, 3, 7, and 9) are embedded alpha layers that contain various architectural props, furniture, and/or characters.
When you add a parallax window to a scene, you can show or hide these layers, and customize their depth (how close or far away they appear in the room).
The remaining squares represent the ceiling (2), left wall (4), back wall (5), right wall (6), and floor (8).
Use Cases
The typical use cases for using parallax windows in Twinmotion are as follows:
When rendering an outdoor architectural scene modeled in an external design application and imported into Twinmotion. In this scenario, the buildings usually contain openings for windows, but the interiors are often empty, as the focus of the architectural design is the exterior of the buildings. Instead of modeling the interiors and populating them with objects and lights, which can be time-consuming, you can place parallax windows behind the window openings and quickly set up your interior environments.
When you need to fake a window on the exterior of a building that does not have window openings. For example, the buildings you download using the map feature in the Populate panel under Urban do not have any window openings. In this type of scenario, you can place parallax windows onto the outside surface of the buildings.
Day and Night
Each parallax window has a day and a night version, and automatically switches between the two depending on the current time of day in the Twinmotion scene. This effect is created using two different textures:
When the time of day is within daylight hours, the day texture is used and shows the interior without interior lighting.
When the time of day is within nighttime hours, the night texture is used and shows the interior scene with interior lighting.
Night Life Simulation
When the parallax window uses the night texture, you can create dynamic nighttime scenes by enabling the Night life simulation option and control the nighttime features of the parallax window interiors.
You can add realistic nighttime effects, such as:
Control the percentage of windows on which the night life simulation has an effect.
Randomize the color temperature of the parallax windows.
Randomize the exposure used in the parallax windows.
Make the lights in the parallax windows twinkle (go on and off) at random times and control how often this happens.
Lighting
Parallax windows are emissive. They act as a light source and can emit light onto objects and surfaces in the scene in all rendering modes: Real time (Standard and Lumen), and Path tracer. For example, the following image shows a sphere placed in front of a parallax window. The light emitting from the parallax window is cast onto the sphere.
Customization
You can customize several properties of the parallax windows, such as:
Use compatible parallax interior textures from third-party vendors. For more information, see Using Third-Party Parallax Interiors.
Modify the exposure and the color temperature of the interiors.
Enable the Night life simulation option and randomize the nighttime lighting effects.
Modify the width, depth, and offset of the interiors.
Show or hide layers that display characters, furniture, or props, and change their depth offset within the interiors.
Apply a glass material to simulate the surface of glass windows, and enable visible raindrops on them when it rains in the scene.
Cull the left and/or right side walls of the interiors.
Mirror the interior scene.
For more information on the parallax window properties you can modify, see Parallax Windows Reference.
Limitation
The textures of parallax windows react only to the ambient light in the environment. They do not react to directional light (sun) or to local light sources.
Adding Parallax Windows to Buildings
To add a parallax window to a building, do as follows:
Select a parallax window from the library in the Objects > Parallax windows category and drag it into the scene. Depending on whether the building has window openings, place it in one of the following ways:
If the building has window openings, place the parallax window inside the building and directly in front of a window opening.
If the building does not have window openings, place the parallax window directly onto the surface of the building.
When a parallax window is placed onto the surface of a building, you can add an extra layer of realism by:
Adding a material that simulates a glass window.
Adjusting the specular reflection of the glass.
Enabling the Weather setting to have visible rain drops on the glass when it rains.
For more information about these settings, see the Glass section in the Parallax Windows Reference.
Once the parallax window is placed, you can customize it in the Parallax windows section in the Properties panel. For information about the settings, see Parallax Windows Reference.
Using Third-Party Parallax Interiors
If you want to use parallax interiors other than the ones in the Twinmotion Library, you can use compatible parallax textures from third-party vendors such as the ones from wParallax.
The parallax windows in the Twinmotion Library each use two different default embedded textures: one for daytime, and one for nighttime. To use a third-party parallax interior, you need to drag the custom parallax window from the Library into the scene, and replace the default textures.
Parallax interior textures can come in many file formats, such as EXR, PNG, and TGA, but all of them must support the RGBA color format (red, green, blue, plus an alpha channel). Using textures in the EXR file format has additional benefits, such as High Dynamic Range (HDR) color support, which is useful for light sources in the textures such as lightbulbs.
To use third-party parallax interiors, do as follows:
Save the textures in a folder on your computer.
In Twinmotion, select the Custom window from the library in the Objects > Parallax windows category and drag it into the scene.
The properties of the Custom window appear in the Properties panel.
To replace the daytime texture, in the Properties panel, go to the Day section and click the preview image of the texture.
In the menu, select Open.
In the Open file window, navigate to the folder that contains the texture.
Select the file and click Open.
The default texture is replaced with the new texture.
You may need to adjust the size of the texture to fit the window. To do this, modify the settings in the Size section.
To replace the nighttime texture, in the Properties panel, go to the Night section and click the image preview of the texture.
Repeat steps 5 to 8.
