Just discovered KeyShot

[GalleryHakon]

I am an artist, having worked mainly in two dimensions with most of my art, but since 2002 I have also played around with Iterated Fractal System program XenoDream, making still life art to be displayed on a flat surface, though of course the program works in 3D. One of the strengths of XenoDream is being able to make quite fantastical procedural shapes that would be impossible to create in other 3D programs. It does leave some things to be desired when it comes to rendering, though, which is to a certain extent a necessary evil due to how the program works, rendering actually building up the shapes dot by dot in space, and materials and lighting, though nice if you know how to use them correctly, are far from realistic.

So, as it has a nice Wavefront Obj file export function that I have just started to try out, I thought I'd want to see what I could do with the shapes I make rendered in other programs, and got a headache just contemplating getting into something as complex and feature-filled as Blender. For me, my plan was just to build my scene from different objects, just like I have done in XenoDream, and render them quickly and efficiently. Surely there must be a program that lets me do that more easily than Blender? I thought to myself.

Well, a day or two of Googling later, I discovered KeyShot, and I must say it seems like the perfect match.

Results look photorealistic straight in the preview window after a few seconds of rendering, the materials are gorgeous, and though one of the big strengths of XenoDream is in its near limitless possibilities for procedural colouring, which of course doesn't export with the object, I see that you have started implementing at least the very beginnings of procedural textures too with the recent wood, stone and chaos colouring algorithms. I will be looking forward to further features of the kind in future as well, as I have seen hinted at elsewhere in the forum.

And - best of all - it is so easy and intuitive to use, it's not like learning a new program at all, but using one that you already know. Some of the finer details might take a little bit more effort, but compared to anything else I have tried or seen, results are practically instant and, like any good tool, it gets out of your way and all efforts can be concentrated on the artistic aspect of the scene: the lights, the colouring and texturing, the position of the elements, the camera angle. Brilliant!

I am sure I would have been able to attain the same results in Blender or some other 3D package - eventually - but it would have taken me weeks or even months to get to a stage where I could do that, and even then setting things up would be a lot more time consuming and frustrating.

In short, I think KeyShot is an amazing product, and I have found the demo very satisfying to use, so I am definitely going to buy the full version soon (Did I hear something about a Cyber Monday sale?).

Being an artist and sometimes having to count my pennies, knowing that version 5 of course might have some more of the procedural colouring features that I would want for my work - and probably other unmissable features too - will you offer early-bird upgrade discounts for a short period when the new version is out? Have you planned how much the upgrade from KS4 Pro to KS5 Pro will be?

Keep up the good work!

Hakon

[KeyShot]

Thanks Hakon!