Costa Mesa, California, February 8, 2022 - Luxion, a leading developer of advanced rendering and lighting technology and maker of KeyShot®, the first real-time ray tracing and global illumination program for 3D rendering and animation, today announced the release of KeyShot 11 that introduces features to speed the visualization workflow and new subscription pricing.
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 visualization 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 combines flexibility and advanced tools for the creation, management, and presentation of all visualization assets. Model: Cki Vang
KeyShot 11 Overview
As the leading visualization tool across every industry, KeyShot is the solution to solving challenges in the project development pipeline by combining advanced visualization authoring with unparalleled ease of use. KeyShot 11 is at the core of creating eye-catching experiences, taking visualization 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 is a milestone release for Luxion,” says Claus Thorsgaard, CEO of Luxion. “For the past year we have been investing massively across the organization, from development to sales and support, while maintaining our focus on what we do best – building products that let designers across industries, in both small businesses and large corporations, easily bring their ideas to life, from still images to immersive 3D experiences. Going forward, our customers will have even more flexibility with KeyShot, through our subscription-based capabilities and cloud visualization platform.”
“With KeyShot 11, we continue to pursue our vision of maximizing the value of 3D pipelines across industries,” says Derek Cicero, VP of Products and Strategy at Luxion. “From 3D paint to CMF and Web Viewer, we have worked closely with key customers to develop the tools needed to extend KeyShot across the enterprise and allow designers to explore creative ideas and easily deliver assets to manufacturing and marketing. We are planning consistent updates to our features and cloud capabilities throughout the KeyShot 11 release cycle to deliver value to subscription and maintenance customers.”
KeyShot 11 Feature Highlights
The following highlights the top features in KeyShot 11. More details and examples of the new capabilities in KeyShot 11 are available at keyshot.com/whats-new/. The entire list of features and improvements in KeyShot 11, along with information on how each feature works, is available in the KeyShot 11 What’s New Guide. Key features include:
3D Paint
KeyShot 11 introduces 3D Paint, a new texture painting tool, that allows users to further customize 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. Learn more about the new 3D Paint capabilities here.
KeyShot 11 3D Paint allows users to use adjustable and custom brushes to apply and layer material appearance and textures.
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. Learn more about CMF output and the Material Information Manager.
KeyShot 11 combines powerful material information management along with CMF output to capture all material variations.
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. Learn more about the Physics Simulation capabilities here.
Physic Simulation in KeyShot 11 allows quick application and recording of physics using KeyShot Animation.
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. Learn more about the KeyShot Web Viewer here.
The KeyShot Web Viewer enables users to upload and share their KeyShot scenes with all material and environment variations.
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. Learn more about the complete scripting capabilities here.
KeyShot 11 Workflow Automation brings Headless Rendering to automate an array of functions including the Material Graph and Render Output.
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.
KeyShot Subscription Options
With the release of KeyShot 11, Luxion is introducing subscription pricing for all new licenses, which reduces the upfront cost to a pay-as-you-go model. Subscription terms are generally one year, during which time users receive:
- All major KeyShot releases and patches
- Access to exclusive Subscription-only features such as KeyShot Web Viewer (requires additional KeyShotWeb Module)
- Self-service licensing, allowing users to activate and deactivate machines running KeyShot
- Assisted phone and email support with remote desktop options from KeyShot members
KeyShot Pro and associated Module subscriptions are available for immediate purchase, billed and renewed at yearly intervals. For additional information, please see the KeyShot Subscription FAQ.
What Customers are Saying
“KeyShot 11 makes packaging easier by cutting down my lead time and allowing me to get a finished package in front of stakeholders weeks earlier than physical samples.”
Matt Hanzly, Bucktail Design
“There is no better application for 3D visualization than KeyShot 11. The simplicity and elegance of the workflow structure makes rendering 3D and animation a joy.”
Eric Rosner, Art Director/Illustrator
“With KeyShot 11, animating an environment got a whole light brighter! Being able to use a custom curve to dynamically control the brightness of the environment is “one more thing” that makes our job a lot easier (and faster and more fun). And, it makes our video content more real.“
Mike James, Managing Principal & CG Artist, Thomas Burke & Others
Availability
KeyShot 11 is available immediately for download and purchase at keyshot.com and through all certified KeyShot resellers. All KeyShot customers with active annual maintenance will automatically receive the upgrade to KeyShot 11. For questions on upgrades, maintenance or transferring your license to subscription, please contact sales@keyshot.com. For information and examples about the new features in KeyShot 11, please visit keyshot.com/whats-new/ and follow KeyShot on Facebook or Twitter.
About Luxion
Luxion is a leading developer of advanced 3D rendering and lighting technology. KeyShot is the first real-time 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 Google, Chrysler, Coca-Cola, Fossil, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, Victoria’s Secret, HP, Microsoft, Philips, Under Armour, Adidas and many more. Please visit keyshot.com for more information and follow Luxion on Facebook or Twitter.
Press contact:
Luxion, Inc.
Josh Mings
Director of Marketing
josh.mings@luxion.com
+1 (949) 274-8871
KeyShot is a registered trademark of Luxion ApS. All other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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