Epic Games Teams Up with Autodesk to Accelerate Real-Time, Immersive Design Capabilities Across Industries

27. September 2022
Epic Games and Autodesk, Inc. have today announced a strategic collaboration to accelerate immersive real-time 3D experiences across industries, with an initial focus on architecture, engineering and construction (AEC).

AEC practitioners face pressing challenges to deliver projects faster than ever, at lowered costs – all of this while facing labor shortages. The solution is more open, connected workflows with third-party integrations that simply work together. Epic Games’ strategic collaboration with Autodesk aims to make immersive environments and collaborative workflows easily accessible to designers, engineers, and construction professionals, so they can deliver more innovative projects in less time. Real-time technology delivers more “what ifs” per hour than traditional means of visualization - unlocking creativity and more efficient solution finding.

The first integrated offering will be Epic Games’ Twinmotion for Autodesk Revit, helping designers bring their projects to life and tell the story behind their intent or to communicate a complex issue simply. As Revit is used to design, document, and deliver building and infrastructure projects, Twinmotion complements the process by keeping pace with real-time rendering of design and build efforts. Autodesk intends to make Twinmotion for Revit available to all Revit customers as part of an upcoming release.

“The integration between Autodesk Revit and Twinmotion promises to deliver a truly seamless, real-time 3D experience for design professionals,” said Marc Petit, Epic Games’ Vice President, Unreal Engine Ecosystem. "We share a common goal with Autodesk, giving customers more time to be innovative. By tapping into Epic’s ecosystem of real-time 3D tools and libraries, users can spend more time bringing their designs to life and less time handling complex data and technical workflows."

“We know our customers are looking for more visualization and collaboration experiences through extended reality,” said Autodesk EVP of AEC Design, Amy Bunszel. “Together with Epic Games, we will expand on what’s possible. In immersive environments, designers can communicate to their project teams and clients with unparalleled realism how projects will look and feel upon completion for better decision-making and outcomes."

Epic and Autodesk have been teaming up since 2008 when Autodesk joined Epic Games’ Integrated Partners Program, enabling integration of Autodesk 3D design software with Epic’s Unreal Engine. In addition to Revit, Epic’s Datasmith technology supports 3ds Max, Navisworks and Inventor workflows to simplify bringing projects into Unreal Engine. In 2021, Epic and Autodesk collaborated to offer a new Unreal Live Link for Maya plugin, enabling media and entertainment (M&E) creators to stream data from Maya to Unreal in real time.

Looking ahead, we aim to develop experiences for customers beyond AEC industries, including M&E and manufacturing, bringing forth the value of real-time content creation. As members of the Metaverse Standards Forum, Epic Games and Autodesk are also driving open standards that enhance portability and integration, equip customers with immersive and collaborative technology, and deliver real value for customers.

For more information, visit the Unreal Engine blog.