Keyshot 10 interior rendering quality

[giorgiocassetta]

Hello and nice to meet you,
first time poster here, i'm Giorgio, yacht designer.

We just purchased a KS10-Pro licence and are experiencing major issues with interior renderings. We have used succesfully tested v9 for about 8 months for our interior renderings. Long story short, the same scene/settings/machine will always produce lower quality renderings with about 3x the render time in Keyshot 10 versus KS9.

See attached two crops from the same scene rendered in both KS9 and 10 with 64 samples, noise reduction on and no post production.
The original 4k render takes 10 minutes in KS9 and 30mins in KS10.

As you can see the KS10 picture has way more GI noise and speckles. While the extra light that is captured is a welcome bonus, these issues basically renders the new version unusable. Tweaking GI/lights/materials settings won't make any difference. Even at 1 sample KS 9 would clear the image nicely, while KS10 never gets to a decent looking picture.

Am I the only one experiencing this? My KS reseller says they are having similar issues and are hoping for a quick service release.

For your info, workstation is a 3970k w 64gb of ram, all cores active, HT active.

[DriesV]

Hi Giorgio,

Are you able to share the scene, so that we here at Luxion can have a look?

You can send data securely via our WeTransfer. Send to dries-at-luxion-dot-com.

Dries

[GTumblety]

Exactly the same issues with our product renderings. Same files, same settings and finding it significantly slower on both CPU and GPU in Keyshot 10. This is over 3 different machines with slightly different hardware and drivers so not hardware related. We removed Keyshot 10 within a day and went back to 9

[giorgiocassetta]

Dear Dries,
thank you for your reply and attention.
I'm uploading the scene's KSP, you should be getting it in about 10 mins.  Kindly note that it's part of a project on which we are under a strict NDA.
I sincerely hope that the problem lies somewhere with us rather than with keyshot 10.
Best,
Giorgio

[Jon-213]

The same happens to me.
After testing it, I think the problem is connected with the updated denoiser.
I could be mistaken, but the renders of K9 and K10 look more or less the same until I enable the denoiser.
Looks like it's having problems with the normals of objects with (or through) reflected and transparent materials (scattering medium, glass, etc).
Maybe a checkbox option could be included to use the old denoiser?
These are my observations-opinions, I could be mistaken
Take care.
Cheers.

[DriesV]

Exactly the same issues with our product renderings. Same files, same settings and finding it significantly slower on both CPU and GPU in Keyshot 10. This is over 3 different machines with slightly different hardware and drivers so not hardware related. We removed Keyshot 10 within a day and went back to 9

Hi GTumblety,

Sorry to hear that.
Significant slowdowns of KeyShot 9 scenes in KeyShot 10 is not something we have experienced in our own internal testing. It could be that your scenes are set up in a very specific way that makes them particularly slow, in a way we haven't captured in our testing scenarios.

We would gladly look at the scene to figure out what is causing the slowdowns.

If you are able to share the scene, then please send us the KeyShot 9 version, so that we can do comparisons between KeyShot 9 and 10.

You can send data securely via our WeTransfer. Send to dries-at-luxion-dot-com.

Dries

[DriesV]

The same happens to me.
After testing it, I think the problem is connected with the updated denoiser.
I could be mistaken, but the renders of K9 and K10 look more or less the same until I enable the denoiser.
Looks like it's having problems with the normals of objects with (or through) reflected and transparent materials (scattering medium, glass, etc).
Maybe a checkbox option could be included to use the old denoiser?
These are my observations-opinions, I could be mistaken
Take care.
Cheers.

Your observations are correct insofar that the Real-time View image denoising when rendering on CPU behaves differently in KeyShot 10 versus KeyShot 9. In KeyShot 10, albedo and normals information is used to guide the denoising. For offline rendering, denoised results should match between both versions though.

The issue presented here is more related to the global illumination smoothing with Interior Mode.
When I get my hands on the KeyShot 9 scene, I will conduct some tests and do direct comparisons between KeyShot 9 and 10.

Dries

[GTumblety]

Hi DriesV

Thanks for your response but i am struggling to follow Keyshots logic here. When you release a new version surely you are testing with historic scenes and set up files, from a number of years previous? This is how people work in the real world. Users can't be expected to either recreate or update a tonne of parameters so it functions correctly. The scenes we use are not very specific, they are pretty much slightly modified standard ones. My feeling is most of the testing being done is with brand new set up files that favour new code etc?

thanks
Gareth

[giorgiocassetta]

Hello Dries and all,
any news on this topic?

[DriesV]

Hello Dries and all,
any news on this topic?

Hi Giorgio,

The issue seems to be related to the many light sources in the scene. For some reason, the presence of the many lights (especially IES) slows down Interior Mode on CPU in KeyShot 10.
We are looking into what is causing the slowdown.

Dries

[DriesV]

Hi DriesV

Thanks for your response but i am struggling to follow Keyshots logic here. When you release a new version surely you are testing with historic scenes and set up files, from a number of years previous? This is how people work in the real world. Users can't be expected to either recreate or update a tonne of parameters so it functions correctly. The scenes we use are not very specific, they are pretty much slightly modified standard ones. My feeling is most of the testing being done is with brand new set up files that favour new code etc?

thanks
Gareth

Hi Gareth,

Considerable regression testing is being done with a new release to ensure that performance and quality are at least maintained. But sometimes, unfortunately, issues go unnoticed and slip through the cracks. In such events, we adjust our testing routines to make sure the same issue doesn't occur in the next release.

The fact that you're finding KeyShot 10 significantly slower on both CPU and GPU is very interesting, as it doesn't align with our own observations from testing.
If you can, I urge you to share your (KeyShot 9) scenes with us, so that we can do some testing and benchmarking, and find the root cause of any slowdowns. 

You can send data securely via our WeTransfer. Send to dries-at-luxion-dot-com.

Dries

[giorgiocassetta]

Hi Dries,
I've sent a reply via email some days ago. Have you got any news here?

[DriesV]

Hi Giorgio,

The issue is been looked at, but I have no ETA for a fix or update yet.

Dries

[giorgiocassetta]

Hi Giorgio,

The issue is been looked at, but I have no ETA for a fix or update yet.

Dries

Thank you Dries,
I guess my next question would be, is there a way to downgrade a KS10pro License to a KS9 temporarily, until this has been fixed?

[DriesV]

I guess my next question would be, is there a way to downgrade a KS10pro License to a KS9 temporarily, until this has been fixed?

Is the KeyShot 10 license brand new? I.e. Did your studio not have a KeyShot 9 license before?

Dries