How to sync materials, environments, backplates across a company?

[eobet]

We have about 5-15 people at our company who will potentially use Keyshot (floating licenses). Some are power users, some will only install it and maybe use it once or twice a year.

We want to maintain our own library of materials that will be updated and expanded.

How can we ensure that all of our users will always have the latest set of these resources when they choose to use Keyshot?

[Robb63]

You can set up a folder on a public (to your company) drive with materials, environments, backdrops, etc... and under preferences point each users Keyshot to use those folders rather than the default local folders.
I did that for several years at a previous employer and it worked great.

[guest84672]

To add to what Robb63 said - you can actually have both, local resources and shared resources in your library.

[eobet]

Thank you for the tips!

We will try this.

[guest84672]

This screenshot may help. Notice that you can add multiple folders for each asset.

[mattjgerard]

Can verify. I have one other artist I work with, and we set up folders on our network share that we both point to. If I save a new material into that library from within KS, it automagically  updates the other's library. Its fantastic. Along with using folders to organize materials by product catagory, it really works great.

[eobet]

This screenshot may help. Notice that you can add multiple folders for each asset.

Thank you, this is great. We just updated to Keyshot 7 and are wondering if this procedure can somehow be automated?

It's quite a lot of clicks for each person to do, and we suspect that not many will actually do it.

[Will Gibbons]

This screenshot may help. Notice that you can add multiple folders for each asset.

Thank you, this is great. We just updated to Keyshot 7 and are wondering if this procedure can somehow be automated?

It's quite a lot of clicks for each person to do, and we suspect that not many will actually do it.

Not sure how you'd automate it as you need to tell KS where to look for the items. It's only 7 clicks and once it's done, you don't need to do it again. Basically a set-and-forget kind of function.

[mattjgerard]

Yeah, its not too bad, if this was a huge demand, it would be nice to have the option when installing to point the installer to the network folder and have the installer do it all for you, but yeah, currently once its done, i forgot how I did it

[INNEO_MWo]

Yeah, its not too bad, if this was a huge demand, it would be nice to have the option when installing to point the installer to the network folder and have the installer do it all for you, but yeah, currently once its done, i forgot how I did it

You only need one single "master instance" and set your path to the network drives. This will be saved in the keyshot7.xml that can be easily copied to all users.
Work done!

At some customers we sync kind of a master library via script to the local user library with every start of KeyShot. This keep the master library untouched by all the users. So if someone delete library stuff or badly change something, the user has to restart KeyShot and get a clean setup. And if all goes wrong, the user kann delete the entire library and start with the script. That works very well. - BUT! - all users get the same keyshot7.xml with the same UI theme and can't reload recent project files.

[eobet]

Yeah, its not too bad, if this was a huge demand, it would be nice to have the option when installing to point the installer to the network folder and have the installer do it all for you, but yeah, currently once its done, i forgot how I did it

You only need one single "master instance" and set your path to the network drives. This will be saved in the keyshot7.xml that can be easily copied to all users.
Work done!

At some customers we sync kind of a master library via script to the local user library with every start of KeyShot. This keep the master library untouched by all the users. So if someone delete library stuff or badly change something, the user has to restart KeyShot and get a clean setup. And if all goes wrong, the user kann delete the entire library and start with the script. That works very well. - BUT! - all users get the same keyshot7.xml with the same UI theme and can't reload recent project files.

This is the information I was looking for. Thank you!

[eobet]

So I'm going to have to resurrect this thread again, because I just downloaded all the mold-tech materials from here:

https://www.keyshot.com/resources/downloads/assets/mold-tech/

Then I put them in a folder on the network, and added it via the method detailed above (assinged it as read-only), and it appeared as a Shared Folder under the Materials tab, which was great.

What wasn't so great was that it's empty, even though it's filled with .kmp files when I look using Windows file explorer. Anyone know what is wrong?

I also have a number of materials downloaded from Keyshot Cloud that I had to manually export to these network folders (a huge bother, why can't I just download from Keyshot Cloud to a file directly) which also don't show up in the Shared Folder...

[INNEO_MWo]

So I'm going to have to resurrect this thread again, because I just downloaded all the mold-tech materials from here:

https://www.keyshot.com/resources/downloads/assets/mold-tech/

Then I put them in a folder on the network, and added it via the method detailed above (assinged it as read-only), and it appeared as a Shared Folder under the Materials tab, which was great.

What wasn't so great was that it's empty, even though it's filled with .kmp files when I look using Windows file explorer. Anyone know what is wrong?

Correct me someone if I'm wrong: A .kmp file is a KeyShot material package that has to be extracted in a library folder to get the .mtl files and the textures if added. (It is similar to a .zip-archive where you can't see the content 'til it's extracted)
These .mtl's and texture files can be shared via the master library to users.

I also have a number of materials downloaded from Keyshot Cloud that I had to manually export to these network folders (a huge bother, why can't I just download from Keyshot Cloud to a file directly) which also don't show up in the Shared Folder...

KeyShot works with a download folder with sub-folders for the different file types (materials, textures, environments and backplates). And if these materials are optimized/modified (names, parameters, ...), they're can be saved in the desired library structure (via explorer/finder or KS features). So you've got more control to the result.

The download folder can be used just like a temporary placeholder.


Hope that helps to find the right workflow.

Cheers
Marco