Luxion, a California-based leader in real-time rendering software, has announced KeyShot 10.2, their latest big update to the popular rendering solution.
Big new features include an all-new Materials Library, faster caustics, and much more.
KeyShot 10.2 in Detail
This latest update of KeyShot includes updates in materials, geometry, performance, and workflows. The big leading new feature is the dramatic performance in caustics along with a revamped Materials Library.
An image from the new KeyShot 10.2 demonstrating its stunning rendering capabilities. (click on image for larger picture)
KeyShot 10.2 also features a new touch-friendly Configurator style and new Mesh Simplification tools. Here are some more details below:
- Materials Library — a completely rewritten library now features material-specific thumbnails to visualize materials appearance and properties more accurately. The library now will load resources dynamically and thus not lock up the materials library while loading. There are several other enhancements as well.
- Touch-Friendly Configurator — Touch-Friendly is a new Layout Style available in the Configurator Wizard and provides a minimal, touch-friendly interface for Presentation Mode. The new style provides customization options specific to the interface elements including options for size, color, styling, and icons. Previous configurators may be updated to use the new style by choosing the Touch-Friendly in the Layout Style options.
- Mesh Simplification Tool — This new capability gives users the power to reduce the number of triangles in a mesh while keeping the overall shape. This new feature is beneficial to users taking geometry to KeyVR or other AR applications where performance is improved with lighter models with less triangles. This tool is similar to the Re-Tessellate tool that requires NURBS to calculate the new mesh. For models that do not have any NURBS, the new Mesh Simplification tool prevents the need to reduce the quality in the modeling software only to re-import it into KeyShot. Learn more about Mesh Simplification.
- Axalta Paints — The KeyShot exclusive set of Axalta paint materials now offers the possibility of adding metal flakes to the paint with new options for Flake Size and Flake Density. Additionally, the metal flakes are randomly distributed and will match the specular reflection and color of the underlying Axalta paint material.
The new caustic algorithm written for version 10 saw additional tweaks making caustic even faster. The update can enable the software to handle thousands of lights and runs incredibly fast on NVIDIA RTX Ampere GPUs. It additionally allows details to be seen in the caustics in a fraction of the time, both up close and at a distance.
Additionally, caustics have been improved for smooth environment lighting and more consistent brightness. Read more about Rendering Caustics in KeyShot on the GPU.
Availability
KeyShot 10.2 is available now for download and purchase at Luxion’s website here and through certified KeyShot resellers. A new KeyShot 10 Pro license is USD 1,995 while a KeyShot 10 Floating License is USD 2,995 and that license includes FlexNet based server license (Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux).