KeyShot, the Most Popular Rendering Application, Just Got a Little Better

KeyShot 10.2 improves metal flake paint, simplifies mesh and shows the light dance through your whiskey.

KeyShot 10.2 adds features for mesh simplification and metallic flakes for Axalta paint materials.

Luxion has released a minor upgrade with a few major enhancements for KeyShot, the preferred independent rendering application for product design.

KeyShot 10.2 adds a geometry simplification tool that lowers the number of triangles in the mesh—hence the rendering burden—without visibly changing the shape. This is especially useful for KeyVR, the company’s AR/VR application. Mesh simplification is similar to the Re-Tesselate tool found in KeyShot except that it does not require the mesh to be NURBS based.

Before the fall. Caustics cause a refraction pattern under a glass of whiskey. (Picture by David Merz, courtesy of KeyShot.)

What’s the difference? Look closely. Caustics, first introduced in KeyShot 9, cause the flare of light to the left of the base of the perfume bottle.

A caustic is a range of light that is refracted as it passes through or is reflected from a material. When a caustic causes a concentration, as does a magnifying glass, it burns, hence the origin of the name. An example of a caustic is a rainbow or the dappled patterns on the bottom of a pool. Most rendering applications with ray tracing support caustics. The rays simulate photons bouncing off and through a material. The number of photons and their paths is something that has been accounted for and made much faster with the advent of GPUs with specialized algorithms. Ironically, the use of GPUs was downplayed by Luxion, once proud of being 100 percent CPU based so it could “run on any computer.”

KeyShot 10 introduced a new algorithm for caustics and version 10.2 supports more lights (“thousands”) and claims to be faster (“fraction of the time”).

It’s not clear what advantage caustics would provide in product design, as little in product design has anything to do with light passing through fluids. Let’s say this is just another example of KeyShot being a rendering overachiever.

A library of Axalta paint materials that gave KeyShot users the ability to show metal flakes in paint (popular for car finishes) now has options for flake size and density. Also, the metal flakes are randomly distributed so they will match the paint’s specular reflection and underlying color.

Users can now select material thumbnail style. Also, loading custom materials will not lock up the library.

In a previous announcement, Luxion (makers of KeyShot) announced a new CEO. Claus Thorsgaard, who was previously the head of Conscia, a provider of security and IT, took over the reins from Luxion’s founders, the two Danish brothers, Claus and Henrik Wann Jensen, who had led the company since 2003. Luxion also appointed a new chairman of the board.

In April, Luxion joined forces with Denmark’s GRO Capital, a private equity firm that specializes in software and technology, to grow its global market. GRO’s portfolio includes Tacton and several other Northern European companies.