building a group scene made up of 5 or 6 other parts

[graphikjam]

I'm very new, so please excuse my ignorance. I have rendered a bunch of individual products/parts for a client. Think gears, metal parts, etc.  They look fantastic, they are thrilled. I'm not wanting to build one big group shot of 5 or 6 products, all in the same scene, with one master light, just like a photographer would set up on a photo shoot.

I hit import, and chose one of my .bip files with just one product in it, imported it, fine.

I then imported another, chose "add to scene", and it showed up.

Here's where my problem comes in...I can't not for the life of me figure out how to move the 2nd (and 3rd, 4th, etc.) items around the scene. I right click, hit move, and all I get is the xyz axis diagram. I can scale it up, rotate, but not actually move it behind the other product, or off to the side. Everything is dead center in the middle.

I tried clicking/dragging everything I can find, and nothing works.

Certainly I can build one scene made up of multiple parts, all in proper perspective, just like if I laid the products on a white sweep of paper and took a real photo, right?

What can I be missing?

[TpwUK]

Use the scene tree, select the parent object then click position and then the move tool. If you just need to relocate the object click the colour cone and move the object where you want it
along that axis, changing the axis as you need.

Martin

[graphikjam]

I must be going crazy, I do not see any color cone. I see the yellow cube in the center of the circle axis things. I attached a screen capture of what I see. I was able to move the objects around a LITTLE bit using the xyz coordinates in the Position panel. But that's not so great.  I can't use the Y coordinates much, as the drop shadows stay in place while the object moves up and down, the X kind of works, the Z is useless.

Can I not rotate each object just like I can when I'm working on just one item at a time?  I want to be able to freely move, rotate, flip, each object in this scene to get it just the way I want it.

I'm very confused.

[graphikjam]

Okay, I figured out the color cones. I didn't realize you meant click the CONE that was on the end of each axis line. I thought those were arrows. I figured out how to move things around. The attached image is where I'm at now.

Next, my second problem. I imported my 4th item, the orange gear in the scene. There is no shadowing for this one object!  I imported it just like the rest of the items, but for some reason this one has no drop shadow.

Any ideas?

[TpwUK]

Try snap to ground, it looks as if it's floating high, save your camera view before selecting free camera incase you have to go hunting for that part once you have snapped it to ground

Glad you figured the move gizmo it's a handy tool. Also the first part on the left of the image, looks as if it's not snapped to ground as well, you can see the strange shadow


Martin

[graphikjam]

When I snap to ground, the front most items do snap backwards, and the shadows come back, but they are on top of the back items. It appears there is a virtual "wall" that I can't go in front of if I want to keep the shadows. I'm assuming it's where the virtual camera is, the 2 small items in front without shadows are not casting them or something.

I guess I'd have to move all the other items backwards to give a the other items the front most locations. Does that make sense?

[TpwUK]

This sounds very confusing to me. I would say start over now you know how to use the move/transform gizmo. Import your first part, use snap to ground on import, then import the second part and use the same settings on the importer and then use the move tool to position that part where you want it, keep doing this until all parts are into KeyShot and are positioned where you want.

Martin

[graphikjam]

Confusing to me too! Part of my problem with moving things around, is I can't seem to move things backwards very well. The green up cone/line literally moves the part up in the air, increasing the shadow distance, as if it were hovering in the air. I want to keep all parts on the ground level, with shadows, and move them forward and backwards as if I was setting up a photo shoot on a sweep of white paper, then standing over and taking a photo. That's my major problem.

I brought in 3 or 4 items, and they are kind of left to right, everything's fine. But I wanted to put those smaller parts in front of everything, and that's when I lose the shadows, and they are no longer "in the scene". So I tried to push the back 4 items back farther, but they won't go back, only up/hovering. 

Can I tell Keyshot that my virtual work area needs to go deeper back?

[TpwUK]

Ok, from the camera tab on the project viewer, save your camera view (if it's good to you) then select the free view camera, open the position and orientation section use the view orientation and set it to top view, zoom into your parts and move them around as you want, when you're happy with your positioning click the snap to ground button, if it still looks good, click the tick and move on to your next part until you're done.

Go back to the camera tab, and select your saved view from earlier, if you didn't save a camera then use the free view camera and zoom, pan tilt and rotate until you are happy with what you have

Martin