KeyShot 5 brings a streamlined interface with rich, new features for a faster rendering and animation workflow.
Irvine, California – May 29, 2014 – Luxion, a leading developer of advanced rendering and lighting technology and maker of KeyShot®, the first real-time ray tracing and global illumination program, is pleased to release KeyShot 5, the next generation of Luxion’s groundbreaking 3D rendering and animation solution.
With Luxion rendering technology bringing faster rendering speed and capabilities, creating images, animations and interactive visuals throughout the product development process has never been easier. KeyShot 5 introduces enhanced usability and pro level features that allow engineers, designers and 3D professionals to make their workflow more efficient and take their visuals to the next level.
Overview
With KeyShot 5, we wanted to make the interface that revolutionized 3D rendering and animation even more simple to use with new ways to share resources, faster ways to work with materials, more powerful animation features and advanced capabilities.
The KeyShot Cloud leads features with the ability to download new resources and share custom assets. With this, a more streamlined interface delivers a completely updated user experience, smoother interaction of materials and options, a new Ribbon menu for common tools, Favorites and advanced material display. Rendering workflow enhancements introduce Instancing, ability to retain textures, seven new procedurals and speed increases for rendering large models. Animation users gain more power with the introduction of Fade Animation, Motion Blur and Events, while Pro users will receive NURBS ray-tracing, HDRI Editor updates with a new Sun & Sky System, Perspective matching and output to common 3D printer formats.
What customers are saying
“The speed increase from KeyShot 4 to KeyShot 5 allows MakerBot to create beautiful scenes featuring multiple high part-count assemblies without bringing our computers to a crawl. KeyShot has become an integral part of our design and marketing collateral process. With KeyShot 5’s speed increase and new tools, our daily workflow is not only faster but also more flexible.”
Jackson Seidenberg – MakerBot Industries
“What I like most about KeyShot is that I don’t have to fight with the software, you can just immerse yourself into the scene and know you’re going to get a great result. The new ability to render NURBs surfaces directly in KeyShot 5 is a real game changer. Exporting to polymesh or converting to a ‘scene’ format in a render engine has always been fraught with danger. KeyShot 5 has made this transition a thing of the past for me. Model, Save, Render – What could be more simple?”
Martin Spencer-Ford – Freelance 3D artist
“The combo NURBS rendering and Toon shading is proving to be incredibly valuable for generating high quality patent drawings and other IP figures. In order to achieve sufficient ‘curve smoothness’, our KeyShot scenes used to contain several hundred MBs of polygonal data. This was especially challenging to manage from the PDM side of things. Now with KeyShot 5, we can import the NURBS data of our native SolidWorks models and render it directly inside KeyShot without relying on tessellated geometry! All the while, keeping tessellation and thus file size very low. With highest quality curvature and really small scene file size, KeyShot 5 is a double check for our business.”
Dries Vervoort – Henrad NV (Ideal Stelrad Group)
“The new Procedural Brushed texture in KeyShot 5 is a fantastic addition that gives the result I want and the new Backplate Perspective Matching is great for taking the guesswork out of camera setup. Overall, it has a more integrated look and streamlined workflow due to improvements in the UI and tools menus.”
Ed Ferguson – Cascadia Design Studio
KeyShot 5 Features
The entire list of features in KeyShot 5 can be seen and downloaded in a What’s New guide that includes information on how each feature works. Visit www.keyshot.com/whats-new/. A video of the new features can be viewed here. Highlights include:
KeyShot Cloud
The KeyShot Cloud is the online library where users can download new resources, and share their own custom assets. Opening the KeyShot Cloud enables easy drag-and-drop downloading of new resources into their local KeyShot Library, and quick search features and filters to find the perfect resources for a scene. All resources remain on a user’s computer with a copy of the resource uploaded to the KeyShot Cloud and no scene or personal info stored online. The KeyShot Cloud is accessible directly from inside KeyShot and online at cloud.keyshot.com.
NURBS Ray-tracing
NURBS ray-tracing delivers more accurate geometry with smoother edges. This new import feature gives users the option to import and render NURBS geometry from their favorite 3D modeling application. The advantage is crisper visuals and smaller file sizes over data imported as triangle that can display edges and gaps on close detail shots. NURBS import is currently available for all geometry formats, including Creo, CATIA, Inventor, NX, Rhino, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, STEP, IGES, Parasolid and ALIAS. Available with KeyShot Pro versions.
Instancing
Instancing allows users to duplicate parts in KeyShot and on import without increasing file size. Instancing of parts is available within KeyShot as a Pattern tool and completely automated in select KeyShot plugins. All instances can be treated separately for quick appearance studies or linked to apply materials quickly, but will all update when LiveLinking or update geometry is used.
Fade Animation
The new Fade animation allows users to quickly apply an animation that fades parts from one opacity level to another. Through KeyShot Animation users add individual transforms that add animations with a click of a button instead of managing keyframes. Just as simple, Fade animations can be applied while adjusting the opacity of parts and groups on-the-fly which allows users to see the update in real-time as animations are created. Available with the KeyShot Animation Add-on.
Sun & Sky System
KeyShot 5 introduces a new Sun & Sky system for automatic creation of physically accurate geographic lighting. Preset resolutions and locations together with day selection, time and turbidity sliders allow the creation of unlimited daylight scenarios. Custom Sun & Sky environments can be created by users as well and combined with other lighting options available in the KeyShot HDRI Editor. Available with KeyShot Pro versions.
Availability
KeyShot 5 is available immediately. Pricing starts at $995. As with previous versions, animation capabilities can be added to KeyShot for $500 and interactive KeyShotVR capabilities can be added for $1000.
All customers who bought KeyShot on or after February 14th, 2014, as well as all customers who purchased KeyShot for Education will receive the upgrade to KeyShot 5 free of charge. All KeyShot customers with active annual maintenance will automatically receive the upgrade to KeyShot 5. All other customer can upgrade to KeyShot 5 for an incremental fee.
For more information please contact sales@keyshot.com. For more information on KeyShot 3D rendering, animation and KeyShotVR please visit www.keyshot.com.
About Luxion
Luxion is a leading developer of advanced 3D rendering and lighting technology. KeyShot is the first realtime ray tracing application that uses a physically correct render engine based on scientific research in the areas of scientifically accurate material representation and global illumination. Addressing the visualization needs of designers, engineers, marketing professionals, photographers and CG specialists, KeyShot breaks down the complexity of creating photographic images and animations from 3D digital data. Luxion’s customer list includes many of the Fortune 1000 product manufacturers and major industrial design companies including Chrysler, Fossil, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Procter & Gamble, IDEO and SMART Design. Visit www.keyshot.com for more information.