TUSTIN, CA — Luxion, a developer of advanced rendering and lighting technology and maker of KeyShot, the realtime ray tracing and global illumination application, has announced the release of KeyShot 6. The release introduces powerful new features and faster workflow capabilities for 3D rendering and animation.
KeyShot 6 (www.keyshot.com) refines the rendering workflow with reduced complexity and advanced features for unmatched ease in creating the highest quality visuals. Additionally, KeyShot 6 is now optimized for interior renderings, including complex interiors with indirect lighting, with an all new material graph that allows complex material creation, including roughness mapping for weathered materials and material animation.
With the widest support for the most popular 3D file formats and expanding software integration, designers, engineers, marketing specialists and 3D artists rely on KeyShot to fit seamlessly into their workflow, reduce setup and rendering times, and allow deeper focus on creating amazing visuals. Luxion’s focus on speed, accuracy and simplicity in KeyShot 6 deliver time-saving enhancements in existing KeyShot functionality and news tools to provide greater material control, optimized lighting and more camera options to KeyShot users across all industries around the world.
“With KeyShot 6, we have raised the bar on the image quality that modern rendering tools can provide. The new interior lighting mode and the material graph combine the fastest, full global illumination solution with a powerful material creation tool.” said Claus Wann Jensen, Co-founder and CEO, Luxion. “We have worked closely with KeyShot users to ensure this is our best release of KeyShot yet, and we are comfortable saying that this is the most efficient tool available for all your rendering needs.”
“For anyone who overlooked KeyShot thinking it's only for quick visual renderings, they will want to look again.” Says Tim Feher, Auto Industry CG Lead. “With Keyshot 6, Luxion not only shows how fast rendering can be, they make a home at the top of the list for best rendering solution.”
Designer Martin Spencer-Ford says, “KeyShot 6 is coming of age with this release. The all new Material Graph allows you to create complex materials. You can also apply materials or textures to labels for a new level of realism. It does it all quickly, easily and above all efficiently. This, combined with the new Geometry Editor and the Interior Lighting preset, put it above the competition.”
KeyShot 6 Overview
KeyShot 6 includes more flexible import options, new interior lighting mode and additional lighting presets, real-time region rendering and multi-layer PSD output to improve workflow efficiency. Material capabilities are expanded with the new Material Graph, materials on labels and material animation options. The ability to create, save and share scripts, edit geometry and quickly shift camera verticals eliminates workflow bottlenecks and allows for a greater level of control. Animation features now include path, DOF and panorama animations while KeyShotVR is now optimized for interior KeyShotVRs and responsive website layouts.
KeyShot 6 Feature highlights
The entire list of features in KeyShot 6 and information on how each feature works is available in the KeyShot 6 What’s New Guide. Visit keyshot.com/whats-new/ to download the guide and view additional feature highlights of the new features. Highlights include:
Interior Lighting Mode
The new interior lighting mode in KeyShot 6 is a completely new, game-changing technology for visualizing interior spaces. In the same way that KeyShot changed the speed at which products can be rendered, KeyShot 6 provides the fastest, most accurate method for rendering complex interior lighting. Scenes containing hundreds of lights and illumination through small windows can be rendered interactively without compromising the quality or the accuracy, and it all happens automatically in KeyShot without users having to adjust complex parameters such as number of photons needed to render a given scene.
Material Graph
Material creation and editing is now more powerful than ever before with the KeyShot 6 Material Graph. The Material Graph is a node-based visual interface to construct advanced materials and textures. Users can use existing materials as a starting point or create their own by dragging and dropping materials, textures, animations and layer effects onto the work area, using connectors to quickly create advanced materials that can be saved and shared. As always, any adjustment to the materials can be seen directly, in real time, with the highest render quality.
Materials on Labels
KeyShot’s powerful labeling capabilities are now extended with the ability to apply materials and textures to labels, blending with surrounding materials to enhance appearance and realism. This flexible approach allows the same opaque material types used for KeyShot materials to be applied directly to labels with the same material and texture options available for a more accurate communication of labels and their true physical properties.
Geometry View and Editor
KeyShot 6 introduces an entirely unique way to interact with a scene and model using KeyShot’s new Geometry View. This highly responsive, secondary real-time viewer brings the freedom of an additional viewport, 1:1 animation playback and camera path animation control. It also includes Geometry Editing for splitting surfaces, calculating vertex normals, separating individual surfaces or closing open boundaries directly inside of the KeyShot.
Material Animation
Color and Number Fade animations in KeyShot 6 now make it possible to quickly animate material colors or settings, change materials opacity or fade lights, through the new Material Graph or the Material Textures tab, eliminating the need to blend frames in post-production. Animation are applied immediately, added to the Animation Timeline with the ability to change Fade Animation settings, toggle visibility or add other animations during playback.
Camera Path Animation
KeyShot 6 opens up the ability to create incredibly dynamic camera motion with the new Camera Path Animation. With more control over the camera, smooth path-driven animations can be added in just a few clicks. Path Animations can be created quickly by moving a selected camera and adding control points with options to move, add and or delete existing cameras. Combined with real-time viewing and the other new features in KeyShot 6, the visual possibilities are endless.
KeyShotVR
Additional capabilities come to the KeyShotVR add-on, used in creating high-end, interactive visuals for web and presentation. A new ‘Look at’ mode helps to visuals what a space feels like from a first person perspective. For KeyShotVRs with zoom enabled, image quality is preserved to retain the highest level of detail, and embedding KeyShotVRs on websites is now faster with fully responsive option that allows the KeyShotVR to automatically resize to fit the browser.
New Product and Pricing With the release of KeyShot 6, Luxion introduces new product structure and pricing for KeyShot HD and KeyShot Pro Editions. KeyShot HD now comes with unlimited real-time rendering and output resolution and remains priced at $995 USD. KeyShot Pro now includes KeyShot Animation, previously a $500 add-on, and remains priced at $1995 USD. Animation will no longer be available as an add-on for new purchase of KeyShot. KeyShotVR and all KeyShot Network Rendering options remain available as add-ons for all editions of KeyShot. Availability KeyShot 6 is available immediately for download and purchase at keyshot.com. All customers who bought KeyShot on or after May 1, 2015, as well as all customers who purchased KeyShot for Education or KeyShot for ZBrush will receive the upgrade to KeyShot 6 free of charge. All KeyShot customers with active annual maintenance will automatically receive the upgrade to KeyShot 6.