While the Library panel focuses on common items, Project gives you control over everything you do with the dataset on which you’re working. The other key panel here is the Project panel. It even includes most of the Pantone colour definitions, too. The Library panel also plays host to the Colours functionality introduced a couple of releases back, which allows you to swap out a material’s colour without affecting its physical properties, making experimentation with different colourways a snap. Each is categorised and searchable – useful for materials, in particular. This gives you access to all of your presets and your library of materials, textures, environments and so on. The first is the Library panel (by default, this is found on the left). The bulk of your time will be spent instead in the various panels around the edge of the UI, with several key panels to get your head around.

One new addition here is the Lighting preset menu. There’s also a strip of pull-down menus, although experience tells me that this isn’t used much in practice, unless you’re delving into preferences and such. When you open the system, you still have the model/rendering window, with its strip of global commands (for things like view control) running along the top. KeyShot’s UI hasn’t changed a great deal with this release at any fundamental level. Let’s deal with the user interface (UI) first. The final details aren’t yet set in stone – but it should give you a good idea of what’s to come. The big question is: can KeyShot support more complex tweaks and refinements, without sacrificing the ease of use and speed that has driven its wide adoption in design and engineering circles?īear in mind that this review is based on beta software. So with that focus on efficiency in mind, it may seem counterintuitive that KeyShot 6, due for release in August, introduces more control and fine-tuning capabilities to the system. It’s about getting the final image in front of the user quickly and making sure that final image is as good as possible. KeyShot is not about spending hours creating materials from scratch or tweaking lighting set-ups.

It loads the native CAD geometry and even establishes live links to it, so any design changes can be quickly pushed through the system.įinally, KeyShot does a great job on providing efficient workflow: it’s all about drag, drop and render. In other words, KeyShot doesn’t require users to figure out a random workaround. Third, developer Luxion has focused on ensuring that CAD geometry comes into the system cleanly – a challenge with which many general-purpose rendering systems struggle.

Keyshot 6 release date