How Collaborative Tools are Revolutionizing the Design Pipeline: An Interview with KeyShot

Posted on 18/11/2024 by Sarang Sheth

The journey of creating a product doesn’t end at design—it’s where it begins. KeyShot, a trusted name in product visualization and rendering, is evolving that journey with its innovative Product Design-to-Market Suite. Imagine a world where designers, developers, and marketers don’t work in silos but move together in perfect sync. That’s the vision KeyShot is bringing to life, and it’s already shaking up workflows for companies big and small.

We sat down with Garin Gardiner, Product Director of KeyShot Hub, to uncover how this suite is solving challenges designers didn’t even know had solutions. From effortless collaboration to smarter asset management, KeyShot isn’t just keeping up with the demands of the design world—it’s rewriting the rules. Dive into this conversation to explore how KeyShot is empowering creators to dream big and deliver faster.

Click Here to Download Now: The whitepaper for an in-depth look at how this new framework can transform your business.

Yanko Design: What specific areas in the product design process does KeyShot’s new Product Design-to-Market Suite address? How does this optimize a business’ workflow in ways that older versions of KeyShot didn’t?

Garin Gardiner: Our flagship product, KeyShot Studio, is primarily geared towards the individual designer. It was the first scientifically accurate rendering engine, now used in over two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies, with thousands of customers around the world. We’ve always worked closely with our customers to keep Studio relevant to their needs, and over two decades of development, we learned about other significant needs related to the design process, team workflows and business logistics. We saw a huge opportunity to help – and to revolutionize the way products are brought to market.

We’re introducing a concept called Product Design-to-Market, which is a holistic strategy that connects the many departments involved in product creation and market delivery. You can think of it as bridging the product design and go-to-market processes. Instead of working in silos, we’re encouraging a smooth exchange of information and assets across design, development and marketing teams. The result is faster iteration, better alignment, and a seamless transition from first sketch to market delivery.

Of course, you need the right tools to make this vision a reality. Our Product Design-to-Market Suite, which includes KeyShot Studio, also provides comprehensive design team support in KeyShot Hub and connection to the management and distribution of marketing assets in KeyShot Dock.

Yanko Design: How have early adopters responded to KeyShot Hub’s collaboration capabilities, and can you share how it has improved their design process?

Garin Gardiner: It is amazing how nearly every customer we’ve talked to, when we ask them how they’re navigating team workflows, say they struggle managing a central repository for their team to find the core items they use frequently. When individuals can’t find what they’re looking for, they often create duplications, and there’s so much time wasted in that. Hub provides that central repository, so everyone has access to the current version of the file, meaning no duplications are necessary. Plus, changes to the file can automatically be tracked and you can easily revert back to a previous version.

Another favorite is the shared material library in Hub. Customers say being able to work from the same material library makes a huge difference. If a material gets modified, the entire team will automatically get the latest and greatest the next time they use a material. They are also able to tag it for easier searchability, so they aren’t creating duplicate materials, like they often do today.

Hub’s related assets feature is really resonating with customers. When you apply materials to a scene and save it to the Hub, you are able to see all those materials linked to the scene in the Hub for a quick CMF view of your scene.

Tagging is another feature customers appreciate. When saving a rendering to the Hub it will automatically attach tags – Model Sets, Camera, Studio, Environment, Image Style, Colorway, and Materials. These tags can then be used to search for renderings. Searches can be saved for later re-use by all members of the team. Our customers care a lot about their CMF – it’s a key aspect of what they do. They can also manually update tags if they prefer.

Customers are also loving the side-by-side comparison feature between versions. You can select two versions and real-time compare them using a dynamic slider; it’s really helpful to compare differences between versions, especially when the differences are in small details. Our customers create a lot of versions of the same rendering and being able to compare versions side-by-side is helpful.

These are all features that Hub users say address the team and workflow challenges they’re facing today. Ultimately, it’s all about saving time and enabling easy collaboration, so designers can focus on their craft rather than administrative tasks. And you can see how everything works in a full demo of Hub available on YouTube.

Yanko Design: What developments in other industries are providing inspiration for KeyShot as it paves the way forward with its new Product Design-to-Market Suite?

Garin Gardiner: There’s certainly movement toward breaking down silos and supporting cross-collaboration. We have seen how companies like Microsoft have enabled richer collaboration using the cloud through their Teams platform. We have also seen design tools like Fusion transform how their customers work with Fusion Team.

These developments were part of what inspired us to offer a purpose-built Product Design-to-Market Suite to better support our customers. Now KeyShot provides speedy and intuitive rendering, support for design team workflows, and support for marketing.

Yanko Design: We’re very excited about KeyShot Dock’s enhanced Digital Asset Management system! How do you envision it helping companies better organize and distribute their 3D assets across marketing and sales channels?

Garin Gardiner: Right now, marketing teams are typically responsible for generating their own images and animations, separate from product design. They budget for product visuals and often make them from scratch, spending time and money on photography and design work. But they could be saving time and money by repurposing the 3D renderings already produced by design teams, which make it easy to create an infinite amount of marketing-worthy product visuals. CAD models and KeyShot scenes can be stored in KeyShot Dock, providing a connection between marketing and product design and empowering marketing to use those assets across go-to-market channels.

Our customers tell us that 3D visuals are much more effective than 2D images or product photography; 3D visuals lead to higher conversions and lower return rates.

Customers can expect regular updates to Dock. Over time, we are looking to enable viewing 3D interactive files like GLBs and even the possibility of generating on-demand 3D viewables from CAD models like SolidWorks, STEP and more.

Yanko Design: How do you see technologies like AI and machine learning influencing the future of 3D rendering and Digital Asset Management, and will KeyShot incorporate these innovations?

Garin Gardiner: We’re considering how to incorporate AI into our tools in a way that adds value to users. While generative AI can provide impressive results in image generation, we still believe that accurate rendering – down to highly detailed materials and brand elements – will require physics-based rendering. However, we are analyzing how AI can help our customers achieve greater efficiency in their workflows or increase the speed and quality of rendering, through processes like sampling light rays used by rendering algorithms or denoising rendered images.

On the marketing side, AI has the potential to make it faster and easier for teams to generate 2D renderings as a replacement for physical photography. Imagine feeding AI with 100% accurate product data and using it to generate creative environments around accurate renderings.

These are all possibilities we’re looking at right now. AI has so much potential to provide creative and logistical support – it’s all about making the most of it.

Image Credits: Silvester Kössler

Click Here to Download Now: The whitepaper for an in-depth look at how this new framework can transform your business.

The post How Collaborative Tools are Revolutionizing the Design Pipeline: An Interview with KeyShot first appeared on Yanko Design.

Why KeyShot’s New ‘Product Design-to-Market Strategy’ is a BIG DEAL for Designers and Brands

Posted on 21/10/2024 by Sarang Sheth

As industries evolve at breakneck speed, so too must the tools that power them. With increasing pressure to innovate quickly, deliver immersive experiences, and streamline processes, companies need solutions that can keep pace. Long known for its powerful 3D rendering capabilities, KeyShot is stepping into an expanded role with a vision that goes beyond just visuals. The brand is now introducing a comprehensive solution for the entire product design journey, or what they call their new ‘Product Design-to-Market’ framework. This shift promises to change how companies of all sizes design, collaborate, and deliver products to market, going well beyond simple 3D visualization (which KeyShot’s already proven to be a market leader in).

Click Here to Download Now: The whitepaper for an in-depth look at how this new framework can transform your business.

The Evolution of KeyShot

KeyShot’s 3D rendering software has been a staple for designers worldwide, offering photorealistic renderings and an intuitive workflow. But as industries change, so too must the tools that power them. Today, the product development process is a complex web of teams, assets, and software—often siloed and inefficient. Design, engineering, and marketing teams are tasked with bringing ideas to life while navigating scattered workflows and disconnected feedback loops.
Recognizing these challenges, KeyShot has expanded its scope to introduce a Product Design-to-Market Suite. This new approach aligns all stages of a product’s journey—from the first sketch to the moment it hits the market. The goal? A more unified, streamlined, and collaborative process that minimizes waste and maximizes creativity.

What is Product Design-to-Market?

The concept of Product Design-to-Market is simple but transformative. It’s a holistic strategy that bridges the gaps between the many departments involved in product creation. Instead of working in isolated silos, KeyShot’s vision encourages a fluid exchange of information and assets across design, development, and marketing teams. The result is faster iteration, better alignment, and a smoother transition from concept to market delivery.

For many companies, the current state of product design is far from optimal. Data is often scattered across platforms, teams work with outdated versions of assets, and crucial feedback gets lost in the shuffle. These inefficiencies cost time, money, and—perhaps most importantly—creativity. KeyShot’s Product Design-to-Market Suite seeks to eliminate these pain points by centralizing the entire process within one ecosystem.

KeyShot’s Expanded Offering

With this new vision, KeyShot has unveiled three key tools designed to revolutionize product design and delivery:

KeyShot Studio: The rendering tool we’ve previously known as KeyShot, KeyShot Studio remains a top choice for rendering photorealistic 3D visuals. Now with enhanced features, like improved texture baking and animation support, it integrates more deeply into the product development process, allowing teams to do much more than just rendering.
KeyShot Hub: A brand-new addition to the KeyShot family, Hub is all about collaboration. It’s a centralized platform where teams can manage scenes, assets, and versions, ensuring everyone stays in sync during the design journey. This tool aims to solve one of the biggest pain points in product development: the lack of a unified space for feedback and iteration.
KeyShot Dock: Formerly Digizuite’s DAM (Digital Asset Management), Dock takes the guesswork out of managing 3D assets across departments. It ensures that teams can access the right assets at the right time, helping to streamline the transition from design to marketing and beyond.

Together, these tools form a complete Product Design-to-Market Suite, designed to break down the barriers that have traditionally slowed product development.

Why This Matters for Designers and Businesses

In a landscape where time to market is critical and customer experience reigns supreme, KeyShot’s new direction offers a much-needed solution. For design teams, it means less time lost in tedious back-and-forths, fewer revisions, and more focus on creativity. For businesses, it translates to faster product launches, reduced costs, and a better alignment between design and marketing teams.

Whether you’re part of a small design studio or a large corporation, the ability to quickly adapt and deliver products to market can be a game-changer. KeyShot’s Product Design-to-Market Suite approach ensures that teams can iterate faster, collaborate more efficiently, and ultimately bring better products to life.

A New Era of Product Design

By expanding its role from rendering software to an all-encompassing design-to-market platform, KeyShot is positioning itself at the forefront of modern product development. This isn’t just a rebrand—it’s a reimagining of what’s possible when design, engineering, and marketing work in harmony. And as industries increasingly shift towards immersive experiences and rapid innovation, KeyShot’s vision offers a clear path forward.

For designers, it’s a chance to focus less on the logistics of development and more on pushing creative boundaries. For businesses, it’s an opportunity to streamline processes and deliver products that truly resonate with their audience.

Learn more about KeyShot’s Product Design-to-Market Suite and download the whitepaper for an in-depth look at how this new framework can transform your business.

Click Here to Download Now: The whitepaper for an in-depth look at how this new framework can transform your business.

Learn more about KeyShot’s Product Design-to-Market Suite

The post Why KeyShot’s New ‘Product Design-to-Market Strategy’ is a BIG DEAL for Designers and Brands first appeared on Yanko Design.

7 Rendering Tricks to make your KeyShot Renders look Completely Photorealistic

Posted on 20/04/2024 by Sarang Sheth

Render by Ali Rouzbeh

These small tips will take your renders from average to awesome.

If you’re on this website reading this article, there’s a fair chance that you’re an Industrial Designer who 3D models and renders for a living, and if that’s true there’s an even fairer chance that you’ve heard of KeyShot. Touted by 88% of designers as the best software for realistic renders, KeyShot is known for two things, being intuitive and easy to use, and being great at creating good renders with low effort. However, just like how a great camera doesn’t make you a great photographer, a great software doesn’t automatically make your renders incredible. If you’ve used KeyShot for work, personal projects, or the occasional design competition, here are a few lesser-known tips that should completely revolutionize your rendering game. Use these tricks to upgrade your skill set, bookmark the article for later, and give KeyShot 2024 a download so you can put your new rendering skills to the test!

Click Here to Get Free KeyShot Pro + Keyshot Web

1. Perfection lies in imperfection

Render by Jay Bhosale

That might sound like a paradox, but look around you – nothing is perfect. Your phone has fingerprint marks on it, your table’s got a few scratches, the glass you’re drinking water from isn’t 100% geometrically perfect – its surface has marginal imperfections that cause light to reflect/refract in unique ways. If you want to look real, you have to embrace reality… and in reality, nothing’s perfect. Sure, your product render against a white background can be as perfect as possible, but if you’re looking for a photorealistic scenario render, obsess over the imperfections. Add dust and fingerprints to flat glossy surfaces, use bump maps pretty much anywhere you can, create scratches as a layer/label in your material, remove 100% sharp edges (everything is marginally rounded off), and most importantly, push objects out of alignment in your scene. No real-world scenario has stuff aligned perfectly. These settings alone should take you halfway to photorealism, because humans perceive imperfections as a part of reality.

2. Bokehs are everywhere

Render by Mads Hindhede Svanegaard

Your eyes are telescopic. They can’t focus on everything at the same time – you look at one thing and everything else blurs out. The blur is the key here, and it’s why portrait-mode photos on smartphones look great too. Seldom do you see photos of ANYTHING where every single item is in focus, and similarly, your renders need to ‘focus’ on that too. Go to the Camera tab on the top right and scroll down to the part that says Depth of Field. Activate it, adjust your focus distance, use the target button to click on the object you want to focus on, and set your F-stop to an appropriate number to ensure everything else is properly blurred. It’s easy to overdo the blurring, so once you find the right F-stop, raise it a little higher to err on the side of caution (don’t over-blur stuff, it’ll look fake). Remember, blurring takes a significant chunk of your rendering time, so if you DO use this tip, double or triple your rendering time per image. The results will come out fantastic.

3. Adjust your Image Settings

Render by Andrei Garbu

If you’ve ever used a camera, chances are you didn’t just point at a photo and hit the shutter button. You probably adjusted the exposure, aperture, ISO, and maybe played around with the white balance too. Think of the camera in KeyShot as a camera in real life – all it really does is capture the angle and focus… but there are still settings you need to tweak. Here, the Image Settings are your friend. Click on the Image tab on the top right corner and switch from Basic to Photographic. Now you can play with the exposure, contrast, white balance, highlights, shadows, midtones, and other parameters. You can even increase or decrease your image’s saturation to get you that perfect balance of colors, darkness, and light. Select ‘Linear’ in the Response Curve setting, enable the Curve editing feature below, and tinker away! It’s the secret sauce your renders need!

4. Beginners render, legends ‘Denoise’

Render by Sam Gwilt

Sometimes your renders just look grainy because you didn’t give them enough time to render out perfectly. Makes sense, you’re probably on a strict deadline and you don’t have 10-20 minutes to spare per render. Luckily, KeyShot’s Denoise feature in the Image Settings works like magic. They just blur out the grains in your renders, letting you ‘cheat’ your way through a quick render. Enable Denoise and watch as all the grains disappear miraculously. Set your Denoise level to around 0.6 for a balanced effect – setting it too high will give you weirdly blurry/smudgy renders, and setting it too low will give you grainy images. The Denoise feature works VERY well when you’re using the Depth of Field setting too, allowing you to easily cut down your rendering time without cutting down on quality.

5. Caustics are a headache, but they’re worth it

Render by Tommy Cheong

If there’s any transparent object in your render, chances are that it won’t just absorb or block light, it’ll bend light too. If you’ve ever looked at a reflection of a glass of water on a table, or those bright lines at the bottom of a swimming pool, those are caustics. They’re caused by light being manipulated by transparent/translucent objects. Caustics in KeyShot remain disabled by default, but that’s only because they’re kind of an absolute headache. They require a truckload of CPU/GPU power, take a LOT of time to perfect, and even more time to render. But if you nail your caustics, you’re guaranteed to get a few ‘wow’s from people who see your renders. The Caustics setting can be found in the Lighting tab in the top right corner. Enable it and also enable Global Illumination. Increase your ray bounces as well as your global illumination bounces, and if you’re using glass or plastic as a material, go to the material settings and increase the sample size. The problem here is that there will be a difference between what KeyShot shows you in the preview window, and what it actually renders, so the only way to really tell if you’ve done a good job is by rendering images, reviewing them, and then tweaking the settings. Rendering caustics also takes a LOT of time, and here Denoise won’t help you. You just need to trust the process and let KeyShot do its job simulating the bouncing of light to create those caustic refractions. Like I told you, it’s a bit of a headache, but the rewards pay off well.

6. If you’re thinking fabrics, think RealCloth

Render by Hossein Alfideh Fard

Perhaps one of KeyShot’s most underrated materials, RealCloth adds unbelievably photorealistic cloth effects to any fabric in your scene. Whether it’s a tablecloth, the upholstery of a sofa, or even the strap of a camera, RealCloth’s one job is to mimic the woven effect of any kind of cloth. It adds depth, weave-patterns, and even lets you bake in imperfections like flyaway fibers and threads. If you’re simulating photorealism, chances are one of the objects in your scene has a fabric texture (it could be something as small as a cloth tag on a product). If it does, tap into the power of RealCloth to get that absolutely perfect cloth effect. Don’t rely on fabric bump maps online, trust me they won’t give you the precise control or sheer jaw-dropping dynamism that RealCloth will.

7. Shadows are just as important as lights

Render by Will Gibbons

When you’re setting your scene, don’t focus all your energy on getting the right highlights. Focus also on getting great shadows. This means ditching the HDRI lighting settings and actually adding physical lights to your scene. Photorealism requires work, and those drag-and-drop environments won’t help you achieve it. Sure, you can use the environments to create realistic reflections, like a sky reflecting off a windshield of a car… but there’s NO way that environment will create the dramatic shadows you need. For those, you’ll require area lights, point lights, and/or spotlights. You’ll have to add these lights to your project by assigning them as materials to random spheres and planes within your scene. Unlike the HDRI environments, these lights will create actual shadows that are crisp at some edges, blurry at others, and more importantly, shadows that overlap, warp, and interact with each other. Take your smartphone flash and hold it against your hand. Move the flash closer and see the shadow grow bigger, move it farther and see the shadow get smaller – the shadow’s shape and behavior are determined by physical lights in your scene, not by the environment lights. So add physical lights to your scene and keep those shadows in mind because while the eyes don’t ever focus on shadows, they do register them. A render without accurate shadows will just look… off.

Click Here to Get Free KeyShot Pro + Keyshot Web

The post 7 Rendering Tricks to make your KeyShot Renders look Completely Photorealistic first appeared on Yanko Design.

How to make a Domino Chain Reaction in KeyShot using the new ‘Physics Simulation’ feature

Posted on 22/02/2024 by Sarang Sheth

Last year, a global survey crowned KeyShot as the “Best Rendering Software,” with 88% of designers overwhelmingly picking it for its incredibly photorealistic rendering capabilities. Now, with KeyShot’s newly unveiled Physics Simulation and Camera Keyframe features, the software is growing even more powerful, bringing real-world physics and camera effects to make your renders pop even more.

Click Here to Participate in the 2024 KeyShot Animation Challenge. Hurry! Challenge ends March 10th, 2024.

I put KeyShot’s Physics Simulation feature to the ultimate test by rendering a dramatic domino chain reaction scene. Setting up the simulation took hardly any time, with incredibly easy controls that took mere minutes to get the hang of. The results were jaw-dropping if I say so myself. In this article, I’ll show you how I managed to pull off one of my most exciting KeyShot rendering experiences ever. I’ll walk you through how I set the domino scene up, what parameters I input into the Physics Simulation window, and how you can recreate this scene, too. I’ll also share tips and tricks that can help you create some incredibly real simulations with objects falling, bouncing, and colliding with each other, absolutely enhancing your KeyShot rendering experience to a level like never before.

The entire scene was modeled in Rhino 7, starting by building one single domino, creating a spiral curve, and arraying multiple dominoes along the curve. The dominos were spaced at roughly 2 centimeters apart, ensuring the chain reaction would go smoothly from start to finish. The entire scene has a whopping 1182 dominoes in total; a little ambitious considering I was going to render the simulation on a 2022 gaming laptop.

Tilt the first domino to help kickstart the physics cycle

To use the simulation feature, import your scene into the latest version of KeyShot (2023-24) (get a free trial here), set the scale, add the materials, and pick the right environment. Before you use the physics feature, however, you need to prime your scene – in this case, it meant tilting the first domino forward so gravity would kick in during the simulation. The Physics Simulation feature can be found in the ‘Tools’ section on top. Clicking on it opens a separate window with a preview viewport, a bunch of settings, and an animation timeline on the bottom.

The Physics Simulation feature can be found in the Tools window

To begin with, pick the parts you want to apply physics to (these are the parts that will be influenced by gravity, so don’t pick stuff that remains stationary, like ground objects). The parts you don’t select will still influence your physics because moving objects will still collide with them. Once you’ve chosen what parts you want to move (aka the dominoes), select the ‘Shaded’ option so you can see them clearly in the viewport.

The settings on the left are rather basic but extremely powerful. You start by first setting the maximum simulation time (short animations require short simulations; considering mine was a long chain reaction, I chose 200 seconds), followed by Keyframes Per Second – This basically tells KeyShot to make your animation more detailed or choppy (think FPS, but for simulation). I prefer selecting 25 keyframes per second since I’m rendering my animation at 25fps (just to keep the simulation light), but you can bump things up to 60 keyframes per second, which gives your simulation smoother detail. You can then bump up your animation FPS to render high frame-rate videos that can then be slowed down for dramatic slow motion. Simulation quality dictates how well KeyShot factors the physics in – it’s at a default of 0.1, although if you feel like your simulation looks off, bump it up to a higher value.

The Physics Simulation Window

The remaining settings pertain to gravity and material properties. The gravity is set at Earth’s default of 9.81 m/s² – increasing it makes items heavier (and fall faster), and decreasing it makes objects float around for longer before descending. I set mine at 11 m/s² just to make sure the dominoes fall confidently. Friction determines the amount of drag caused by two colliding objects – setting a higher friction causes more surface interference, like dropping a cube on a ramp made of rubber, and reducing the friction enables smooth sliding, like the same cube on a polished metal ramp. To ensure that the dominos don’t stick to each other like they were made of rubber, I reduced my friction setting to 0.4. Finally, a Bounciness feature lets you determine how two objects collide – the lower this setting, the less bounce-back, the higher the setting, the more the rebound. Given that I didn’t want my dominos bouncing off each other, I set this at a low of 0.01. Once you’re done, hit the Begin Simulation button to watch the magic unfold.

If you aren’t happy with your simulation, you can stop it mid-way and troubleshoot. Usually, tinkering with the settings helps achieve the right simulation, but here’s something I learned, too – bigger objects fall slower than smaller objects, so playing around with the size and scale of your model can really affect the simulation. If, however, you’re happy with your simulation (you can run through it in the video timeline below), just hit the blue ‘OK’ button, and you’ve successfully rendered your first physics simulation!

The simulation then becomes a part of KeyShot’s Animation timeline, and you can then play around with camera angles and movements to capture your entire scene just the way you visualized it. I created multiple clips of my incredibly long domino chain reaction (in small manageable chunks because my laptop crashed at least 8 times during this) and stitched them together in a video editing app.

Comparing KeyShot and Blender’s Physics Control Panels

The Physics Simulation feature in KeyShot 2023-24 is incredibly impressive. For starters, it’s a LOT easier than other software like Blender, which can feel a little daunting with the hundreds of settings it has you choose from. Figuring out physics simulation in KeyShot takes just a few minutes (although the actual simulation can take a while if you’re running something complex), making an already powerful rendering software feel even more limitless!

That being said, there’s some room for growth. Previous experiments with the simulation tool saw some strange results – falling objects sometimes ended up choosing their own direction, making the simulation feel odd (I made a watch fall down and the entire thing disassembled and scattered in mid-air instead of falling together and breaking apart on impact). Secondly, sometimes objects can go through each other instead of colliding, so make sure you tinker with quality settings to get the perfect result. Thirdly, you can’t choose different bounciness values for different objects in the same simulation just yet, although I’m sure KeyShot is working on it. Finally, it would be absolutely amazing if there were a ‘slow-motion’ feature. The current way to do this is to bump up the keyframe rate and bring down the gravity, but that can sometimes cause objects to drift away after colliding instead of falling downwards in slow motion.

So there you have it! You can use this tutorial to animate your own domino sequence, too, or better still, create a new simulation based on your own ideas! If you do, make sure to participate in the 2024 KeyShot Animation Challenge to stand a chance to win some exciting prizes. Hurry! The competition ends on March 10th, 2024!

The post How to make a Domino Chain Reaction in KeyShot using the new ‘Physics Simulation’ feature first appeared on Yanko Design.

The 2024 KeyShot Animation Challenge encourages Designers to push the limit with new Physics and Camera effects

Posted on 10/02/2024 by Sarang Sheth

Even Instagram pivoted from photo to video content… and so should your renders! Sure, a JPG or PNG can be worth a thousand words, but think of how impactful product videos can be. KeyShot has always been at the forefront of the rendering industry, but with these new features, it aims to make video/animation just as easy as rendering images. The 2024 KeyShot Animation Challenge invites designers to explore KeyShot’s two most powerful animation tools – the Physics Simulation feature, and the Camera Keyframes feature.

These two tools unlock a vast array of possibilities – the Physics Simulation helps bring realism to your renders, letting you create falling/bouncing objects, colliding elements, and impactful scenes. Meanwhile, the Camera Keyframes tool allows you to go beyond the traditional zoom, pan, revolve movements and build a more unique and detailed camera path simply by adding keyframes and allowing the camera to glide between them. You can use either one or both tools in your submission to the challenge, which should be a video of 30 seconds maximum. The more imaginative the better.

Click Here to Participate in the 2024 KeyShot Animation Challenge. Hurry! Challenge ends March 10th, 2024.

How to participate:

Download and Install KeyShot and use the trial code KSANIMATE24 to get free access
Create a 30-second (max) rendered video exploring the Physics Simulation and/or the Camera Keyframe tools.
Render your file in 1080p resolution
Submit your entry by uploading and sharing your visuals on Instagram. Use the hashtag #KeyShotAnimation

Important Note: Finalists will be required to send their .ksp file, so be sure to save that in a safe place!

Timelines:

Challenge begins: February 8, 2024
Challenge ends: March 10, 2024

Prizes:

Gold Prize: KeyShot Pro Subscription + KeyShotWeb Subscription + Render showcased on KeyShot blog, Social Media, Newsletter and KeyShot startup window + A Will Gibbons Masterclass + Access to KeyShot Farms cloud rendering service for 1 week. (64-cores CPU or 1x RTX4090 GPU, value of $449.)
Silver Prize: KeyShot Pro Subscription + Render showcased on KeyShot blog, Social Media, Newsletter and KeyShot startup window + A Will Gibbons Masterclass
Bronze Prize: KeyShot Pro Subscription + Render showcased on KeyShot blog, Social Media, Newsletter and KeyShot startup window

Jury:

Karim Merchant – Senior Industrial Design and Creative Specialist, KeyShot
Reza Tari – Marketing Design Manager, KeyShot
Jordan Doane – Creative Support Specialist, KeyShot

Helpful Tips:

Learn about Physics Simulation and Camera Keyframes on the KeyShot YouTube channel. You can also dig into Animation in the KeyShot manual.

Need a model? Choose from thousands of models in the KeyShot Cloud Library.

Click Here to Participate in the 2024 KeyShot Animation Challenge. Hurry! Challenge ends March 10th, 2024.

The post The 2024 KeyShot Animation Challenge encourages Designers to push the limit with new Physics and Camera effects first appeared on Yanko Design.

KeyShot Announces Colorway Challenge on Instagram with Exciting Prizes and Free Subscriptions

Posted on 02/12/2023 by Sarang Sheth

An indomitable force in the 3D Rendering space, KeyShot has announced “The KeyShot Colorway Rendering Challenge”, inviting designers to participate and win a free year of KeyShot Pro, Rendering Masterclasses from Will Gibbons, and many more prizes. The challenge is simple – explore KeyShot’s vast color library and render a product (any product of your choice) in multiple color variants. The contest, being held on Instagram, is open to all designers and is free to enter. Participants can download a free trial of KeyShot’s latest 2023 software, exploring its myriad of rendering features including the upgraded color library, 3D Paint, CMF Documentation, etc.

Click Here to Participate in the KeyShot Colorway Rendering Challenge Hurry! Challenge ends December 8th, 2023

Here’s how to participate:

Download and Install KeyShot and use the trial code KSCOLOR23 to get free access
Render your product in multiple color variants
Submit your entry by uploading and sharing your visuals on Instagram. Use the hashtag #KeyShotColorway

The competition, which ends on December 8th 2023, will be judged by Karim Merchant (KeyShot Senior Industrial Design & Creative Specialist), Saskia Failla (KeyShot Creative Specialist), and Jan Simon (KeyShot Product Manager). Winners will be entitled to a free 1-year subscription to KeyShot Pro and KeyShot Web, free 1-week access to KeyShot Farms cloud rendering (64-cores), access to a Will Gibbons Rendering Masterclass, and have their winning designs showcased on KeyShot’s Blog, Social Media, Newsletter, as well as the KeyShot Startup Window for the tens of thousands of people using KeyShot every day.

Here’s a look at a few of our favorite entries from the KeyShot Colorway Challenge on Instagram.

Lamborghini Revuelto by Benoit Fraylon

Benoit Fraylon takes the Revuelto for a visual spin with his color explorations on the car’s angular body. Here we look at a matte-finish silver Revuelto, but Fraylon’s Instagram Post also explores chrome, electric blue, and a rather oddly appealing granite pattern!

Apple QuickTake 2024 by Caleb Taylor

I was today years old when I learnt that Apple actually designed (and sold) a point-and-shoot camera back in 1994. Dubbed the QuickTake, it is believed to be the first step in Apple’s digital photography dominance, and a spiritual successor to the iPhone. Caleb reinvented that point-and-shoot camera into a tiny iPhone-inspired action cam, giving it an adjustable screen, three lenses, and a few gorgeous color options in his IG post.

Meindl Boots by Bradley Brister

Bradley’s Instagram Post puts Meindl’s outdoor boots in their right setting. Nestled in a forest setting amidst some tufts of grass and rocky terrain, the boots look rather inviting with their vibrant yet outdoor-friendly color schemes. The red might be a little too eye-catching amidst the wilderness, but that yellow ocher looks absolutely divine, and for the more visually conservative, the olive green makes for a great pick.

Porsche Carrera Recaro Seat by Glen Cordle

Most sportscar interiors try to mimic the edginess of the car’s exteriors, but Glen Cordle wants variety. His Instagram Post highlights a few neat CMF options for the Porsche Carrera’s seat (manufactured by Recaro), ranging from a racy red black and white, to a rather classic houndstooth and suede variant that I honestly can’t get my eyes off of!

Fountain Pen by Rob Adams

There will come a time in our lifetimes when the fountain pen becomes as unrecognizable to younger generations as the audio cassette or floppy disk… but until then, it deserves every bit of spotlight possible. A successor to the quill, the fountain pen has remained one of the most powerful symbols of literature and even of leadership, given the fact that almost every law, treaty, and bill has been signed using a fountain pen. Rob Adams adds a bit of CMF exploration to the almighty pen in his, experimenting with classic colors like rose gold, but even pushing the boundaries with this fire-inspired variant, and even a transparent version, visible in his Instagram Post!

Click Here to Participate in the KeyShot Colorway Rendering Challenge Hurry! Challenge ends December 8th, 2023

The post KeyShot Announces Colorway Challenge on Instagram with Exciting Prizes and Free Subscriptions first appeared on Yanko Design.

KeyShot 2023 adds a bunch of New Features to make it the Most Advanced Rendering Software

Posted on 12/08/2023 by Sarang Sheth

There’s a reason why 80% of designers overwhelmingly prefer KeyShot over other rendering programs. It’s easy, intuitive, and outputs the best visuals with the least amount of effort, speeding up your workflow without compromising on results. The folks at Luxion are now adding even more features to the latest KeyShot 2023 software, making it even more power-packed, efficient, and user-friendly.

Click Here for the Free KeyShot Trial & Whitepaper Report

Enhanced Web Viewer

The KeyShot 2023 updates start with an amped-up Web Viewer that makes it easy for pretty much anyone to view your rendered models on any device – even a smartphone. The Web Viewer supports being able to view a 3D model in both low and high-quality modes (depending on your device) as well as view images, cycle through CMF options, and browse through a KeyShot XR experience. Creating a Web Viewer file is much easier thanks to a new and improved UI, and the file gets hosted on KeyShot’s cloud, allowing you to share links with collaborators, employers, clients, etc., or even embed them in a website. The best part? They don’t need KeyShot to view your creations!

A new-and-improved Web Viewer interface

3D Paint With Pressure Sensitivity

Perhaps one of the most exciting new features to be rolled out in the past few years, KeyShot’s 3D Paint now gets pressure sensitivity for people using drawing tablets in their workflow. Up until recently, applying selective materials/graphics/textures to KeyShot involved needing to make detailed texture maps outside the app and then applying them as labels or as nodes in a material graph. Now, the 3D Paint feature lets you quite literally draw/sketch on your 3D model, adding imperfections, scratches, graphics, etc. without any problems. Pressure sensitivity makes the workflow even more interesting, allowing users to adjust size, opacity, or flow, and create tapered graphics just by intuitively sketching on their pressure-sensitive stylus + tablet.

Expanded Motion Blur Settings + Camera Keyframe

Animation within KeyShot (which saw its fair share of upgrades over the years with the addition of physics just a few years prior) is getting fine-tuned and perfected too, with smoother camera keyframe animation and advanced Motion Blur controls that now give you the ability to adjust shutter-speed to calibrate how much of a motion blur you want in your final animation. Other updates also include tweaks to the CMF output, better Asset List Organization, and better consistency between CPU and GPU rendering outputs.

A Better, Faster Workflow With KeyShot

In a recent survey conducted by KeyShot, thousands of industrial designers and leaders were asked about their preferred rendering software and the reasons behind their choice. The results revealed that a staggering 88% of respondents believed that KeyShot offers the best 3D rendering quality output compared to other software options. This is due to the fact that other software either requires significant time and expertise to master or simply do not meet the same quality standards as KeyShot.

According to the survey report, KeyShot enables users to maximize their artistry and accuracy by providing a wide range of materials and color libraries, as well as in-depth tools that allow for precise adjustments to even the smallest details. The software also offers instant yet advanced control over various parameters such as lighting, environment, materials, and colors. This is additionally made possible through partnerships with renowned companies like Pantone, which have integrated their libraries into the KeyShot rendering software. Click on the report below to learn more.

Click Here for the Free KeyShot Trial & Whitepaper Report

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How To Create Unique KeyShot Materials Using This Free AI Tool

Posted on 27/07/2023 by Sarang Sheth

If there’s one secret I have to share with you to help you unlock the power of better renders, it is to make the materials and environment yourself. Using standard assets is great for quick work, but when you want quality, it’s important to look beyond what your rendering software provides. We covered how you can make your own environments in seconds using AI in an article last month, and now this piece will help you figure out how to make your own KeyShot materials from scratch… using Artificial Intelligence.

As wonderfully easy KeyShot’s material graph is for making parametric materials, if you want to make your own materials from scratch, you need to make sure you’ve got your own texture files. Once you do, KeyShot can work its magic, turning those textures into high-quality materials for your photoreal renders (88% of designers say KeyShot’s rapid workflow provides the best renders in the fastest time).

Free KeyShot 11 Trial: Download Now | Free KeyShot Report: Download Now

WithPoly AI Material Builder

Making your own materials can be a bit of a hassle, given that you need more than just a hi-res image. To make the material look realistic, you also need to make sure your image texture is seamless and is supplemented with other data, like reflectivity, roughness, bump/displacement, ambient occlusion, and a bunch of other factors that add literal depth and realism to your materials. One option is to scour the internet, buying seamless textures and materials from places like CGTrader or Gumroad, or using libraries like PolyHaven or KeyShot Cloud for free but limited resources… Another alternative, however, is to create your own assets using AI text-to-image or image-to-image tools, like WithPoly.

WithPoly is a freemium, easy-to-use website that lets you create your own KeyShot materials using either a text prompt or an image prompt. Using the power of AI, the service lets you either type to create materials from scratch, or upload images and turn them into materials with a few simple steps. The website will generate the texture, let you edit it, upscale it, make it seamless, and even generate color (albedo), roughness, normal, and displacement maps based on the material you create. Instead of spending hours browsing the internet or editing images to make them seamless and extract surface and depth information, WithPoly lets you create your own material assets in a matter of minutes, giving you exactly the kind of materials you need for your renders, whether it’s something as basic as cracked concrete, or as obscure as giraffe skin. Most of WithPoly’s core features are free, and you can download materials made by other people too from WithPoly’s extensive gallery. A $20 per month upgrade to its ‘Poly Infinity’ tier gives you access to a host of other features, including 32-bit exports, 8K resolution image generations, and a royalty-free commercial license to your materials, which you can then sell online.

An example of an AI-generated material from the WithPoly gallery

Text-to-image Material Builder

Open up the WithPoly website and you’re greeted with a search box that lets you search its library for any textures that match your requirements. If you don’t find anything satisfactory, a Generate button right beside the search button turns your search query into a text prompt. Edit the prompt to make it as specific or vague as you want, choose from the various material types, and hit enter to make the AI generate 4 textures that closely match your requirements.

The AI doesn’t just create an image the way Midjourney or Stable Diffusion does, it’s built to create contextual images that perfectly match your needs. Not only does it create the color map file, but it also ensures it’s high res (up to 2K for free accounts), seamless, and tiled onto a sphere to preview. Alongside the color map (or Albedo in rendering terms), WithPoly also generates a normal map, roughness map, height map, ambient occlusion map, and a metalness (or fresnel) map. Once generated, you can either tweak them further or download the files as a ZIP package that you can then use in KeyShot.

Creating a material using text on WithPoly

Image-to-image Material Builder

You don’t need to rely on just the AI-generated image for your ‘materialistic’ needs. WithPoly lets you upload your own image files and turn them into materials too. A “Make Patches” tool lets you upload an image of your choice and write a prompt, essentially guiding the AI to make ‘similar’ images… or the “Upload Image” feature lets you directly convert your image file into a material. Once you’ve uploaded your image, WithPoly’s AI lets you make it seamless, upscale it, and generate normal and height maps corresponding to your image. Roughness, AO, and Metalness maps aren’t accessible for the Upload Image feature to free accounts, but it’s still enough to work with. That being said, your Image-to-image materials will lack sufficient detail in order to make them realistic. To solve for this, it’s best if you simply download assets for materials created by other people in the WithPoly gallery, or go for the Paid tier to access all of WithPoly’s features.

Using the KeyShot Material Graph to create your material in the rendering software.

Building your Material in KeyShot

KeyShot’s Material Graph makes it ridiculously easy to create your own materials from scratch. If you’re interested in learning more about how the Material Graph works, Will Gibbons has a wonderfully concise YouTube tutorial from a month ago. Build out your material by dragging the texture assets into the graph and plugging them into the right nodes. Color/Albedo goes into the Diffuse node, Roughness into the Roughness node, Normal into the Bump node, Height into a separate Displacement node within the Geometry drop-down menu. There’s no node for Metalness or Fresnel, but plugging the Metalness texture into Specular can sometimes give you the reflectivity you’re looking for. Don’t forget to properly adjust the texture scale and positioning, and to name and save your material when you’re done!

Final render of a sphere with an AI-generated ‘Pebble’ material

A Better, Faster Workflow With KeyShot

Free KeyShot 11 Trial: Download Now | Free KeyShot Report: Download Now

The post How To Create Unique KeyShot Materials Using This Free AI Tool first appeared on Yanko Design.

“The Best Rendering Software” – 88% of Designers Prefer KeyShot For Its Stunning Visual Quality

Posted on 18/07/2023 by Sarang Sheth

An in-depth review conducted with over 2000 designers across the world revealed an undeniable fact: Since its inception in 2003, KeyShot still remains the go-to for all designers for their rendering needs… the reason? Even after 20 years, the rendering software reliably produces the best quality visuals with the easiest UI and the fastest workflow, say 2096 industrial designers and team leaders from around the world.

The creative industry has evolved significantly in the past two decades, with 3D visualization becoming one of the most effective ways to communicate an idea through realism. Industrial designers will agree that the profession is a tight balance between engineering, functionality, and art. Clients, or even customers, don’t care if a product simply works… it needs to enchant and entrance you too. The first way the product does so in a definitive way is through its rendering. The rendering describes intent. It describes how the end-result is intended to look, which is why the overall quality of the rendering plays such a crucial role in a designer/studio/corporate’s workflow. Of the more than two million professionals interviewed by KeyShot, 88% of them agreed that the 3D software provided the best of all worlds – offering stunningly beautiful renders without the added time and labor. KeyShot’s UI, over the years, has gotten more and more intuitive, reducing the learning curve for beginners, and making execution easy for experts. Now in its 11th edition with KeyShot 12 underway, rendering has never been easier.

Click Here for the Free Trial & Whitepaper Report

Image Credits: Luigi Memola

KeyShot’s whitepaper (which is available to download using this link), details its sample group of nearly 2100 designers and creative professionals, combining a healthy mix of designers from all across the globe as well as across the experience spectrum. Nearly 40% of the designers have over 15 years of experience in the field, acting as a testament to how long KeyShot’s held its position of dominance. More than 50% of the designers interviewed spend anywhere from below 4 hours to up to 10 hours on visualization tasks every week. 20.75% of creatives use KeyShot for more than 21 hours per week, averaging over 4 hours each weekday.

For almost half the designers, the quality of output mattered the most in their list of requirements, and KeyShot ranked the highest among 8 other popular rendering programs. Ease of use ranked next on the designers’ list of priorities; a benefit facilitated by how seamlessly KeyShot integrates with all popular 3D modeling programs like Rhino, SolidWorks, Cinema4D, Blender, ZBrush, and many more.

Image Credits: Pantone

While designers make up more than 64% of KeyShot’s sample group, the software also sees use in other industries like engineering, marketing, packaging, and even manufacturing; with brands like Motorola, Lenovo, Sonos, Unilever, and Bould Design relying on KeyShot for its game-changing 3D rendering abilities, and its command over lighting, environments, materials, and even colors, thanks to its collaborations with Coloro, Pantone, and RAL to provide industry-leading color libraries.

Head to KeyShot’s website to look at the whitepaper for yourself, and even get a 14-day free trial to the latest version of the software… just to see why the experts always choose KeyShot, a stunning 88% of the time!

Click Here for the Free Trial & Whitepaper Report

Image Credits: Rachel Anne Bernardo

Image Credits: KeyShot Studios

The post “The Best Rendering Software” – 88% of Designers Prefer KeyShot For Its Stunning Visual Quality first appeared on Yanko Design.

How to make your own KeyShot environments with this simple, free AI-powered website

Posted on 19/06/2023 by Yanko Design

Every great render can be separated into two parts – a foreground, and a background. The foreground is often the subject of your render. It’s the model you spent days making, detailing, and adding materials, layers, and textures to. The background is the environment in which your model sits. It includes the scenario, lights, and other elements that surround your model. The tragedy, however, is that 99% of your energy goes into building the foreground, but when it comes to your background, it becomes all too easy to just drag and drop an HDRI environment from your rendering software.

Making your own custom environments for 3D rendering can often be a long, laborious task, which is why most people just use template environments. Traditionally, HDRI (High Dynamic Range Images) 360° environments are captured using 360° cameras, or by taking multiple photos of an environment and stitching them together in a software. However, you can now get an AI to make you a 360° environment with just one sentence. Developed by game dev studio Blockade Labs, Skybox is a free-to-use website that makes AI-generated environments with a simple text prompt. All you do is describe the environment you want, choose from a list of visual styles, and hit Generate. In seconds, the AI creates an environment that you can preview directly on the website. You can then download the environment and easily use it in your rendering software like KeyShot 11, vastly enhancing your workflow; or even in any AR/VR experience you may be building. For now, the service is entirely free, and Blockade Labs gives you the right to ownership of all the images you create (although they get perpetual access to it), allowing you to freely use the environments or commercialize them by selling them online too.

Free KeyShot 11 Trial: Download Now | Free KeyShot Report: Download Now

How to use Skybox AI

If you’ve ever used Google, you know everything there is to know about using Skybox. The website’s UI has just a single text box that you type your environment description prompt into and a Generate button that gets the AI working on your prompt. A drop-down menu lets you select from a variety of styles, like digital painting, realistic, sci-fi, interior, manga, watercolor, and many more, giving you control over your final output. However, most of these themes are targeted toward game developers and artists, so it’s best to stick to themes like Realistic, Interior, or Advanced (No Style) for the most photorealistic results.

When typing your prompt, more is always better. Skybox runs on a modified version of Stable Diffusion, so it’s best to be as expressive and detailed as possible with your description so that the AI doesn’t surprise you with something you didn’t ask for. Skybox lets you input prompts in two ways. A ‘Create New’ feature lets you generate something entirely new, and if you like what you’ve made but you just want to fine-tune it or change the image style, a ‘Remix This’ feature proves to be handy.

How to write your prompt

Prompt writing is an acquired skill, and if you haven’t ever used any AI tools, stick around. If you’re familiar with Midjourney or Stable Diffusion or any Text-to-image program, you can skip this part.

When writing a prompt, you need to express clearly to the AI what you’ve got in your mind. If you’re looking for a realistic road scene, specify whether it’s an urban or a highway setup, describe the scene, the time of day, and any details like the style of road you’re looking for. Throw in a few adjectives if you want. Here are a few examples, along with their results. (You can right-click and download the hi-res images)

Prompt – Cobbled Stone Pathway in an Old Italian Village. Vibrant modern buildings
Style – Realistic

Prompt – Cyberpunk TRON world with TRON motorcycles and illuminated grid floor
Style – SciFi

Prompt – Office meeting room table. Empty conference room.
Style – Realistic

Prompt – Empty warehouse. Large space with skylights and volumetric light rays.
Style – Advanced (No Style)

Additional Skybox AI Features

With subsequent updates, the Skybox AI has gotten some very nifty new features that give you further control over your HDRI creation. A toolbar on the side of the interface now lets you use a brush tool to create preliminary shapes, guiding the AI to make exactly what you have in mind, rather than give you something totally uncontrolled and haphazard. This helps you create a 360° HDRI that exactly fits your needs. A brush and eraser tool help you create an overall skeleton that the AI will then use as its input. You can draw your own buildings, roads, lampposts, tables, etc. to get exactly the right kind of HDRI. Viewing options also let you choose to view your HDRI in a spherical or cube grid, and with or without a ground plane, to give you a better sense of how your HDRI will look in rendering software like KeyShot. Finally, while downloading your HDRI, you can now even download a Depth Map of it to use in other 3D rendering software for a more immersive environment that reacts well to camera movements and creates that parallax effect that makes your renders look absolutely real!

How to import the environment in KeyShot

Once you’ve generated your environment, browse around within Skybox’s interface using the cursor to make sure it has no warped edges, imperfections, or random errors. You can download the image using the download button, and save it to your desktop.

To use the environment in KeyShot, open the software and first set your scene by adding a model to it (or hit Ctrl + 8 to generate a sphere). Once the model’s in place, head to the Project tab on the right side (hit Space if you can’t see it) and click on the Environment button. Click the ‘Create Blank Environment Map’ button to create a new map. Head to the HDRI Editor and select ‘Image’ from the list of options. Select the image you generated and KeyShot automatically turns it into an environment. You may need to play around with the scale, brightness, or contrast in the Settings tab. When you’re happy with how the environment looks, rename your New Environment by right-clicking on it. Then, head back to the HDRI Editor and press the Save To Library button.

Where to find the options on the KeyShot 11 interface

A Better, Faster Workflow with KeyShot

Earlier this year, KeyShot surveyed thousands of industrial designers and leaders to understand which rendering software they preferred, and the reasons behind it. 88% of them mentioned that KeyShot “provides the best 3D rendering quality output” in comparison to other software, that either take time and expertise to master, or just don’t have the same quality standard as KeyShot.

“KeyShot allows you to maximize your artistry and accuracy, providing expansive materials and color libraries along with in-depth tools that allow you to tweak the smallest details,” the report says. The software gives you instant yet advanced control over all your parameters like lighting, environment, material, and even color, thanks to partnerships with companies like Pantone to make their libraries a part of the KeyShot rendering software. Click on the report below to learn more.

Free KeyShot 11 Trial: Download Now | Free KeyShot Report: Download Now

The post How to make your own KeyShot environments with this simple, free AI-powered website first appeared on Yanko Design.