Luxion has rolled out KeyShot 11 this week. The latest release features 3D Paint, Color, Material, and Finish (CMF) capabilities, Physics Simulation tool, Workflow Automation, KeyShot Web Viewer. The company says that the latest release focuses on speeding the visualization workflow. Each newly added or improved feature has been worked upon as per the users’ feedback.

Luxion has introduced subscription pricing for all the new licenses with the release of KeyShot 11. The company says it will reduce the upfront cost to a pay-as-you-go model. However, any node-locked licenses that have previously been purchased for any KeyShot version will continue to work as before. For more information, see the KeyShot Subscription FAQ.

“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.”

The company’s press release highlights KeyShot 11 features as below:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 [email protected]. For information and examples about the new features in KeyShot 11, please visit keyshot.com/whats-new/ and follow KeyShot on Facebook or Twitter.