Luxion Releases KeyShot 11

KeyShot 11 is a pivotal release that expands Luxion’s continued advancements in product visualization. The features in KeyShot 11 reinforce the focus of streamlining each aspect of the product visualisation process to complement the whole of the product lifecycle. Each feature and improvement is a result of working directly with users to solve their most pressing product development needs in the areas of material design, information management, motion, automation, and presentation.

KeyShot 11 Overview

As the leading visualisation tool across every industry, KeyShot is the solution to solving challenges in the project development pipeline by combining advanced visualisation authoring with unparalleled ease of use. KeyShot 11 is at the core of creating eye-catching experiences, taking visualisation capabilities to the next level, introducing new ways to explore details, expanding how ideas are presented, and bringing balance to the art of creating 3D visuals. KeyShot 11 introduces 3D Paint to apply color and textures like never before, new CMF capabilities to manage and organize material information, Physics Simulation to create and capture physical phenomena through KeyShot Animation, Workflow Automation with new headless scripting capabilities, the new KeyShot Web Viewer to upload and share KeyShot scenes online, and much more.

KeyShot 11 Feature Highlights

3D Paint

KeyShot 11 introduces 3D Paint, a new texture painting tool, that allows users to further customise a model’s surface finishes by directly painting or stamping textures on the surface. With 3D Paint enabled, users may directly paint or stamp bump textures, colors, roughness, specularity, refractivity and opacity.

3D paint is an incredibly useful tool for creating unique surface weathering and patinas, and can be used to accurately add wear marks to any surface within a scene. The new feature also allows layering effects to create rich, realistic surface patinas.

Material Management and CMF Output

Color, Materials, Finish (CMF) is a term covering the non-functional identity of a product and its relationship with a given environment. KeyShot is frequently a major part of the CMF process, allowing users to easily change and decide on CMF options during the product design review phase.  

To streamline this workflow, KeyShot 11 adds both Material Management and CMF Output. This robust feature set eliminates the manual process of aligning rendered output to its corresponding materials by allowing KeyShot users to utilize an expansive Material Library that supports metadata about each material, a custom schema builder, and easy output of ready-made “tech packs” for design review.

 

Physics Simulation

Physics Simulation is a new Tool in KeyShot 11 that allows users to record the physics of an object and apply it as a keyframe animation. This tool brings fully simulated animations to KeyShot users along with more accuracy in scattering objects.  

Simulations may be applied to individual or multiple Model Sets, objects, or groups of objects and simulated as parts or an entire group. Users have control over Gravity, Friction, and Bounciness and the ability to adjust the time, quality, and keyframes per second.

 

KeyShot Web Viewer

KeyShot Web Viewer is part of the KeyShotWeb module and allows KeyShot users to easily share KeyShot scenes by uploading them to KeyShot Cloud. It brings sharing of interactive scenes to users across browser, desktop, and mobile device with a single link.  

KeyShot Web Viewer is highly optimized to provide the most realistic visuals available and smoothest interaction possible for viewing 3D in the web browser and on mobile devices. Viewing of any material or environment variations in the scene or any KeyShot Studios is available through the Web Viewer flyout menus. Other features include quality adjustment, texture baking, including a mobile-friendly texture option, and password protection. 10GB of KeyShot Cloud storage is included in the KeyShotWeb subscription.

 

Workflow Automation

Workflow Automation is an advanced new feature, that allows KeyShot users to automate various KeyShot workflows via the KeyShot Scripting Console (with a user interface) as well as through Headless Scripting Mode (without a user interface). Applications include automating render output and speeding up the generation of product variations.

KeyShot 11 expands the set of functions that can be called in headless mode, along with adding support for KeyShot Material Graph control with headless scripting. With the update to Python 3.9.5, 257 total features have been added, including 147 new features and 136 new constants that may be declared.

 

Additional Features

Other features users will find in KeyShot 11 include:

• Environmental Brightness Animation –  Control and adjust the brightness of environment lighting directly with KeyShot Animation.
• Deformable Animation support – Import .mc/.mcx cache files and FBX files with rigged animations in addition to Alembic.
• Skin Tones – New skin materials bring a wider array of skin tones to the KeyShot Material Library to drag-and-drop onto 3D models.
• GPU Cutaway Material – The popular cutaway material is now supported in GPU mode with all cutaway options.
• glTF/USDz Enhancements – KeyShot glTF and USDz export is optimized with support for instancing to greatly reduce file size.