Quicker Rendering Workflow and Consistency

[Lan]

Hello keyshot community, I'm working at a fixture lighting company and I work on rendering for different lighting products. Due to the nature of the business, I'd like to know if there is a quicker way to render different fixtures without spending too much time on tweaking environment settings. My boss recently asked me to shorten the time of creating renderings and he also questioned the lack of consistency with materials and lighting. I've developed a library of materials but since the lighting products come in different shapes and sizes, I'm having difficulties to maintain the same lighting effect for each of them. For instance, my boss asked me why the reflection and colour of the same material applied on a flat and a round objects comes out differently. I'd be very appreciated for guides and suggestions on this issue. Many thanks

[Jeff Tindi]

Hey Hlan, I believe your question is about easily switching environment settings? I'm still new to rendering  so maybe I missmisunderstood but I found this tutorial by Will Gibbons about studios and I believe it might be useful

[andy.engelkemier]

Find two chrome or very shiny objects, one that is bent subtly only in one direction, and another that is bent in two directions. Take a Picture of those at a few angles and show them. For some reason, people don't seem to perceive images the same way as in real life. Looking at a picture is more similar to the effect of looking at a render.

By the Sound of it, you're also having troubles with lighting or emissive materials? The trouble with those, are they are based on size. So First, be sure All your models are real world scale. If it's all coming from CAD, you might be ok, but be sure they are all in the same units just in case. Don't have some in mm, and some in inches, because then they'll have different object scale in keyshot. I'm not quite sure if keyshot's material scale is always world, or if it's local. So better safe than sorry.
But for the actual Lit material, be sure to always use the same size pieces for the lighting element, and save a new material for each. So if you have a 12x12 light and a 48x48 light, then you should make 2 materials because if you use the same material, the 48 is going to put off 4 times the amount of light.
You shouldn't need different environments if products are different sizes. But you're picky then you usually need to adjust environments for every slight camera angle change and model change. You wouldn't use the same studio to light an aluminum can as a kleenex box. Most people use HDRI for reflections, and not lighting. Lighting is pretty darn flexible, but the reflection part of lighting is not very forgiving. That's why we use light tents for the kind of activity you're describing. The lighting is smooth and not very descriptive. If you need a crisp line somewhere to describe a material's glossiness, then you're going to need a custom object/environment pin.

If they Really want fast, then use Only standard cameras and lighting. The longer the lens the better. (and the more boring)
But at a certain point you have to think...."why are we even rendering these?"