Procedural HDRI with multiple light sources including sizes, shapes, and colors.
Hi Ed and all;
You may not be aware of it, but HDR Light Studio has just released V2.0, both Standard and Pro. Visit www.hdrlightstudio.com (http://www.hdrlightstudio.com) and spend some time on this well done website for an overview. It's an amazing app that may suit your needs and dovetails perfectly with KeyShot. KeyShot has become such an important part of my business that I just upgraded from LightStudio Basic to Pro.
In LightStudio 2 Pro you can now add and adjust new lights to EXISTING HDRI's! Great for filling shadows and bringing out reflectiions and form. There's a huge selection of spots, boxes, multi's, blurs, etc. to work with, or you can create your own. Also, there's a "LiveLight" window (included with both Standard and Pro)in which you can adjust and set your lighting on your actual model prior to rendering out the new HDR and dropping it into your .bip file. Best of all, it's slick, easy and a perfect fit with KeyShot.
Bill G
www.GouldStudios.com (http://www.gouldstudios.com)
Thanks for the update Bill. I've owned ver 1 Standard for some time. Their latest version has some great features, but the cost for the pro version is about the same as Keyshot itself.
I'd like to see some basic procedural HDR functions/modifiers within Keyshot. Maybe not all the bells & whistles, but enough to create say five lights with various sizes and shapes.
One of the major competitive advantages of Keyshot is its speed. Allowing me get a final result without leaving the app maintains that advantage. The pros doing a magazine cover will continue doing their multiple passes and post work in PS no matter what, but if I can get an "amazing shot" quickly without leaving the app then I'm happy :) And for the most part I can, but there are many times I wished I could have modified my environment in a small way from within Keyshot.
Ed
It's totally worth the cost if you can swing it.
Mostly for being able to import a model (obj, which you should be able to do from just about anything) and view it in semi-realtime (pretty much like keyshot) to see how lighting or reflections effect it.
it's nothing super complex since it's only 1 material, and you can't even pan around the scene, but Still.