KeyShot Renderer: Uses CPU

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
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I happened to run across this and found it interesting. Here is a rather expensive render engine that is using the CPU. And, after moving around their site it dawned on me the engineer can now do his own renders. Hey, look at this thing. No Computer Graphics training required. But, to put it into a print ad or TV ready commercial is another matter. Well, that is just my take.

One more observation and this was discussed in another thread. If you have a skill set technology is working to make it irrelevant. I’m out of the workforce now but I find that very scary. And, very sad.

http://www.keyshot.com/what-is-keyshot/

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KeyShot is sort of Game Engine. :smiley: that’s why it is fast.

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Keyshot is aim at designers namely industrial,product, automotive designers. It is not aimed at CG artist.

Not all designers have the time or the expertise to do realistic renderings … Keyshot fits the bill perfectly…But if you want to have full control of the output, keyshot may not be the right tool.

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Keyshot makes many assumptions and uses lots of raster tricks to get their speed. You can’t add real lights (only IBL is supported). You can’t create your own materials from scratch, and animation is really only for for turntables.

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Keyshot will do anything you want it to do, it’s not “for” anything. It’s like “BI is good for cartoons, but nothing else”, and “Cycles is magic”…I swear people make things up on here half the time, with nothing to back it up.
I saw on here one time that “you need a complicated node setup to do blurred reflections in BI”. Really? How about turning the gloss amount below 1? I’m at a loss

EDIT: Sorry, just drives me nuts…use whatever it is you are talking about, show me something, then talk. I’ve seen anything from cars to bikes to cartoons to Sculptris to abstract rendered in Keyshot.

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You might be able to shoehorn it into those use cases, but that doesn’t change the fact that Keyshot is aimed squarely at product vis and the automotive industry. You still can’t create materials from scratch easily, or use lamps. But that’s the allure of Keyshot is that you can get something that looks nice just by dragging and dropping a couple of materials from the panel onto your objects and importing an HDR map.

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Actually, m9105826, that is part of what was scary to me. For the business mind gives not a rats ass about art but simply the cost as you might well know. Nor do they like ‘Arty Types’. We on this forum would be the ‘Arty Types’ in this pipeline. But, what if a draftsmen already on the payroll could take it from CAD to a finished brochure. You or your business wouldn’t even be in the pipeline.

Many years ago if you were attempting to break into commercial art you were up against the Mat Services. And, you could have been lugging a killer portfolio but if they already had a damn Mat Service in their mind it was a done deal. “Hell, don’t we have a Mat Service for those little pictures, Agnus?” He wouldn’t have known a van Gogh from dogs playing poker and this is what you were approaching. Now this I know firsthand.

This is just a general thought m9105826 and not directed at you personally by the way. You might have been there done that for all I know.

And, yes the Mat Services employed artist. And, paid them chump change. Business types aren’t usually art lovers nor known for appreciating the effort that goes into it. And, I’m speaking of businesses with say five hundred or less employees here. Something a young Graphic Artist starting out might want in their pipeline of clients. Now maybe things have changed in the intervening years but I doubt it. So when I see anything capable of taking the graphic artist out of the loop I take notice. The man buying it cares not one wit how it was made. All he wants to know is the price of “…those little pictures”.

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KeyShot is the preferred render tool for product designers etc that do:

  1. not have a lot of time to make them
  2. where quick renderings are ok for presentation and material/design discussion
  3. where there is not much funding for professional grade renderings
  4. you dont do renderings a lot and need a quick and easy tool to use from time to time

Keyshot is actually not that fast. The preview mode is speedy because it is an over simplified approach.
The actual rendering then is much slower.

Products like Keyshot is why I think many product design students today suck at rendering.
All they want is to learn this easy and fast product while not realizing that the toolset is so limiting that
real good work you cannot do in it.

This does not mean that KS cannot produce quality renderings - it actually really can, but you are limited
to IBL and thats it.

At my last job they all bitched about Blender and went to KS and they did not realize that the goal of
Blender was teaching them to learn the trade of rendering while KS simply does not do that. But once you
understand rendering and build up some digital photography skills - what digital rendering is for product design -
then any software will be easy.

I also saw a lot of trash Keyshot renderings done by the students simply because they trusted the software
and were why too much impressed with how fast the software works and did not see that their materials
scene composition camera angle etc were just terrible.

At my current job we use Cycles and the students love it because of the render speed and flexibility.
Some still would like something simpler but thats ok as well.

But what blows me is that this software is 1k and can only do IBL rendering … but sometimes time is money
and that seems to work in the studios well.

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I’m in complete agreement, and I’ve only used KS or Bunkspeed a couple of times for automotive vis. But still, we had to learn it at school. And as cekuhnen said, it made for a lot of students who couldn’t render or create a material to save their lives. Many dropped out when they had to take a class using Mental Ray because they thought it was stupid and pointless without understanding what the extra freedom would allow them to do.

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I think you need to see it from two points:

If time and a somewhat realistic visual result is important than Keyshot is a good option.
If you need a very good image for a brochure image than thats a different story.

This are two very different usage scenarios. There is no point in spending a lot of time on
fine images when all they do is to quickly communicate an idea or maybe a material direction.

IKEA switches from studio photography to digital rendering. Whirlpool has their own render department.
They use 3D Max and not Keyshot.

I am still working on a rather large project with a local furniture company for which I do all the brochure
images with Cycles and they love it.

Keyshot can be a nice tool when all you need are some quick results but I do not believe in that replacing
the professional render designers at all.

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Hey Oldghost, you’ve got skills and that matters. Computer graphics, photography, creating incredible visuals… anyone who is trained in those disciplines has incredible value. Software doesn’t denigrate talent, it enhances it.

Professional designers, engineers, photographers and cg artist use KeyShot. All the Microsoft Surface visuals, Fossil watches, Skullcandy… the gallery is chock full of examples.

The render engine is developed in-house by Luxion, completely CPU-based, headed by Dr. Henrik Wann Jensen who introduced the concept of photon mapping to the render world. No special graphics card needed, utilizes all cores for advanced calculations, hence the speed.

As far as features, KeyShot does have hdri lighting and physical lighting, sss, texturing, labeling, view sets, render passes, full camera and object animation and can import 25+ 3d file formats. You can create and share your own materials easily. All changes are seen in realtime, even while playing/editing animations.

Any questions, just ask. Oldghost, feel free to PM me and I can get you set up with a license and in touch with some freelance/independents that may have some suggestions.

Josh @ Luxion (makers of KeyShot)

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Hey goatlip

why is that then when Keyshot is so advanced that with the 1k $ price tag it is slower in finale render mode compared to Cycles and with 1k $ only offers IBL rendering???

Please dont abuse this forum to promote a commercial software with wrong promises.

I am a professional product designer who tested Keyshot and found it overpriced and underperforming.

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@cekuhnen

I’m a KeyShot user.
It DOES have more lighting options than just IBL. Since V4 you have point lights, IES lights and area lights. All with physically accurate parameters and falloff. You can even dial in a radius for the point lights to soften shadows. I believe there’s going to be a sun/sky system in a (near) future release as well.

I don’t agree that KeyShot takes ‘shortcuts’ in the rendering to achieve speed or that it would not be suitable for high-end output. I think the gallery is contradicting you on that one.

It’s true that KeyShot is not as feature bloated (that sounds more negative than I meant :slight_smile: ) than many other render packages. A richer toolset is always very nice in my book, but I like KeyShot’s approach of streamlining the UI and only integrating features if they can keep the whole thing intuitive and clean. I value that a lot. Eventually, the features will be there.

I find that KeyShot surpasses most other renderers in a few key areas that I find important: interactive workflow, great CAD compatibility, great SSS, integrated HDR Editor, the fact that it is a dedicated rendering tool (I can keep working on my CAD data and the tools are squarely aimed at producing images)…

I do agree that there is still a lot of room for improvement. F.i. to make it more flexible, so that it can handle not only product viz, but also interiors; to have a richer and deeper animation system; to have richer material capabilities (layers); ability to share assets;…
In fact, I’m sure Luxion is already aware of most feature requests. They have a very good track record of listening to customers. It’s all just a matter of prioritization and getting things to fit in the streamlined KeyShot workflow.

Just my 2cts as a KeyShot user. :wink:

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Regarding workflow it is easy and fast to use that’s true.
It also loads foreign cad formats another plus.

But what is only fast is Keyshot preview where it takes preview level shortcuts as any other engine does - nothing wrong with that.
If you go into finale rendering it is incredible slower.

And “No special graphics card needed, utilizes all cores for advanced calculations, hence the speed.” in this regard is wrong and can be taken as a sales lie.

I did comparison test renderings and Cycles was in each instance faster with GPU rendering.
I really dont want in that instance compare KS with a GPU engine like Octane.

Thea Renderer is pretty fast and flexible as well being also more a product renderer than a 3D suite but it costs drastically less.

Thats why I find Keyshot simply overrated and overpriced.

With a little work and knowledge you get cheaper and equal products that are actually more flexible.
If you dont want to learn rendering and have a fire and forget tool sure it might be a great option.

15

You must be looking at some old release logs on the Blender site, the complicated node setups for blurred reflections in BI date back before it had native support for blurred reflections.

As for Keyshot, despite what’s inferred here on it expanding beyond just product and business presentations, there would still need to be a clear reason why artists would want to spend over 1K on it over much cheaper options like Vray, Thea, Octane, ect…

Right now I get the impression that the price makes it like the Houdini software compared to other 3D apps., but it doesn’t have functionality that is so far above and beyond the competition that it’s worth it for an artist to pay for it. (Houdini for example has incredibly advanced Vfx features).

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These post have been interesting reading and obviously you guys know more about renderers then I do. While I use BI for my little endeavors probably 75% of the time I can readily see where Cycles would be the go to tool for a furniture account. And a outstanding one I might add.

I not only like the look of BI in many cases and the speed for animating but find sliders and check offs way faster and more intuitive then nodes. Of course that’s a personal like and many seem to find the node based system faster. I do grasp that a node based system is about flexibility. But, we have node setups right here in WIP that make my damn head explode. But, of course many realistic engines have a IF similar to the Blender Internal so the personal preference is no big deal.

But, these post have sent me researching render engines and attempting to find material a non techno might understand. DAMN! Render engines are moving so fast now they almost defy any understanding. And, especially in the world of big budget VFX. A world far removed from the average Blender user or small studio I would think except the benefits eventually filter down.

And, while some like Cycles are attempting flexibility others seem to be going in the opposite direction. From a business viewpoint they have determined the artist cost more then render times for openers. And, let me just say thank goodness for that. So where this thread started we now have render engines that seem to be modeled on taking choices away from the artist.

And, is there any doubt some businesses won’t embrace that or as cekuhnen pointed out embrace it for certain projects. And, while for me and many Blender users it really doesn’t matter it would for someone seeking employment in the graphics field I would suppose. Also it makes for interesting conversation. In my journey through the wonderful world of renderers this morning I ran across this which might interest some of you guys. http://www.fxguide.com/featured/the-state-of-rendering/ There’s a clip which shows some outstanding VFX effects.

///

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Keyhost can render good work that for sure.

The claim it is super fast is simply wrong because many take the preview rendering as the finale rendering
During finale rendering Keyshot’s fast render crashes down to a lot slower performance.

The materials in Keyshot are not bad I think they work quite well.
If you are in a studio where you do not have a lot of time working on shots this might be a good option.

Loading native CAD files like from Rhino I think is really a great help compared to exporting data into OBJ.

However I challenge everybody that I can get the same work as fast imported and done also via OBJ export and scene set-up in Blender.

You load an HDRI file in Keyshot - so you can in Blender.
You drag n drop materials, well create a material list and write those into the Blender start up file for easy application to 3D objects.

Where I see more value in Cycles is simply finale rendering via GPU is drastically faster than that 1k software plus I can use online render farms. You cannot do that with Keyshot. Also in case I need to fix geometry or build a studio setting I can do that right inside Blender.

Technically speaking I feel the UI advantage is minuscule compared to the creative limitations Keyshot only offers.

I just finished a 14k render project with a furniture company. I met online with the graphic designer and via Skype and worked through the shots and material set-ups.

After the project was done the company owners as well as the graphic designers were highly impressed with Cycles being a free software and how quickly I was able to adjust materials, modify scenes, save different camera positions inkl. render settings per shot for individual pages and and and.

I really dont try to crash Keyshot here but hardly any of those extra features the software offers and further more is painfully expensive and simply slower.

Years ago Alias Portfolio hit the market and there is a product from a different company as well. They offer a realtime based openGL approach to product presentation. A license costs 10k. It seems to be a lot, but because you can work so fast in it, you also save a lot of man work time which is expensive over a year as well.

And I think most who use a software like Keyshot are not really CG artists but rather need a simply tool to quickly generate some somewhat acceptable and good looking rendering because they dont have the time to learn about 3D design.

Sometimes rendering is just a side job only - so I can see why they like the software.

I personally just feel I have more control power creative freedom and faster rendering with Cycles.

Not to be offensive I just think that the price for Keyshot is a luxury price like Alias Portfolio because in todays time to many are too lazy to learn the trade right in the first place.

As a product and graphic designer I learned how to draw by hand how to model my hand how to do professional photography by hand and only after that 3D rendering was allowed.

But with all that analog education I am really able to make the most out of 3D render softwares now.

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@cekuhnen since posting this thread I’ve run across SolidWorks which really blew me away. Not to worry it seems like you need a Big Board listing to even get a damn price. Now I realize it’s a CAD tool but damn…

I have no doubt Cycles delivered for you on that furniture job. And, those guys should have been impressed with Cycles. But, I think we’re forgetting something here. I have a buddy doing a animation with a 1GB Nvidia card. And, I don’t believe he has one scene that will render in the GPU. Well, maybe a couple of scenes. And, while this wouldn’t be a big deal with stills for animation it’s a excruciating exercise. And, of course there render farms but for a personal piece of work. So for your recent job Cycles ruled the day. For him not so much.

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@AceDragon: Do you know who said that? YOU did

I’m sorry, but I have a real hard time dealing with people who don’t make art. Isn’t this what Blender is all about? Making stuff? Where is the FUN?

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I dont really think that I am forgetting anything - I am rather cutting through all this sales man talk.

If your buddies personal 3D card only has 1 GB RAM ok fine - use online GPU render farms with high end cards.
The render cost is not even that much. Or simply instead of buying an overhyped 1k product a serious 3D card.

The other designer did the renderings with Keyshot and his per frame performance was not really that good because again Keyshot is great for fast preview quality rendering but for finale rendering it is dramatically slower.

There are many ways to squeeze the data into the VRAM - it is simply a meshing setting.

And again I don’t think KS is a bad product but it is only a niche product.

5 years ago it was unbeatable - today? With Cycles Octane and Thea the story is drastically different.