If Luxion had stores around the world, then on May 29, 2014, I’m confident they would have had people queuing up outside kipping in their sleeping bags, amping to get their mitts on their shiny new copy of KeyShot 5. It’s one of those applications that is just plain cool. The Luxion team do a fantastic job of making people lust after it, but really, it’s about the customers who use it and make sure they let the world know how brilliantly it JUST WORKS. I personally haven’t had the opportunity to use this tool yet, but Luxion have hooked Design and Motion up with a fully functional 30 day trial, so we will set about kicking its tires in due course.
The main point of this post is to let our readers know about its release if you didn’t already and inform you we have a review underway. Anyway, here’s some blurb from Luxion if you guys haven’t read it already:
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.
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 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 US. As with previous versions, animation capabilities can be added to KeyShot for $500 US and interactive KeyShotVR capabilities can be added for $1000 US.
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@luxion.com. For more information on KeyShot 3D rendering, animation and KeyShotVR please visit www.keyshot.com.
