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Extend KeyShot's Usability

Started by Will Gibbons, November 05, 2021, 02:15:21 PM

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Will Gibbons

At the risk of sounding like I'm complaining or asking for a lot, I'd really like to make a case for some areas in needed of attention.

KeyShot is an easy-to-use, versatile standalone render engine that's great for working with CAD. All that's well and good and it serves this market better than anything else. Unfortunately, it seems like in an attempt to persuade users to upgrade each year, a handful of glossy features get added to the software. And adding these new features take lots of time to develop, so naturally, there's little resources left over to devote to improving other areas of the software.

As the CGI industry matures, requirements of users and expectations have outpaced the development of KeyShot in some ways. I fully understand the 'business opportunity' of offering Configurations/AR/VR/Web/GLT/GLB/3D printing (sorry if I'm forgetting any) and any other ways to consume and present 3D rendered content.

However, the most basic function KeyShot serves is to render. Easy, fast and accurate is what I recall being at the core of KeyShot for many years. Rather than focusing on becoming easier, faster and more accurate in each release, it feels like KeyShot has become more of a "Swiss Army Knife of visualization for CAD users".

I just want to share my observations, not ruffle any feathers. Given the above, I'd really love to see a release or more frequent and smaller releases of KeyShot that address lots of bugs, inefficiencies or extend the usefulness of older features. To me, the list below outlines some of the things that would make KeyShot a much more powerful and valuable tool for ALL of its users regardless of industry or experience level.

Rather than create a new post for each idea, I'll try to keep this updated. If anyone has anything to add that isn't a 'major new feature' but rather a 'small, quality of life' feature that'd make KeyShot much easier, faster more accurate/better to use, I'd like to hear!

Thanks in advance to anyone who reads this. Again, my intentions are good with this post!

Rendering
- Resolve Caustics in CPU rendering mode faster (recently rendered a 9,000 sample image on CPU and caustics still splotchy (KS10 Product Mode))
- Apply image adjustments to ALL render passes especially the denoise and firefly filter
- Faster rendering of motion blur & camera blur

Output
- Motion Vector pass
- Multilayer EXR
- Option to output equalized depth pass

Image Adjustments
- Firelfy filter & denoise on a per-material basis
- Support for OCIO color
- Film grain

Cameras
- Lens distortion (spherical distortion checkbox)
- Bokeh control with aperture blade control

User Interface
- All hotkeys to work in geometry view as they do in real-time view
- Click and drag in any value box to scrub value
- Move tool precision mode (modifier key to move more slowly)
- More control in pattern tool such as offset

Material Graph
- Standardize how nodes work (ex. bump add vs. color composite)
- Ability to group and expand nodes
- Ability to color-code nodes
- Ability to add and remove input sockets for nodes (sometimes have to stack color composite/bump add nodes)
- Modifier key to drag node between two others and have the connectors automatically connect
- Value linking. There are so many times when I have to repeatedly change a value... if I could simply copy/paste linked a value across any box (ex. roughness value on 15 different materials) that would be amazing
- Triplanar mapping for procedural textures

Animation
- Control over motion blur amount without having to adjust frame rate
- Ability to load and delete individual frames into the video map node
- Custom curve noise (load noise profile into custom curve node for random values on animated objects)
- Ability to box select and scale vertically/horizontally all keys on a custom curve

Studios
- Assign an in/out value for animations (treating a studio as an animation sequence)




Zeltronic

I can only subscribe to all of will's observations, of course we each have our own needs and for my part I would like to add to this non-exhaustive list the improvement of the fuzz material which would allow it to be transformed into a real grooming tool, For the rest I fully agree with will, I also love Keyshot but we feel that the development teams are less consistent than on certain competing products which release updates very regularly, we must recognize that a good number of bugs persist and take far too long to be corrected ...

INNEO_MWo

#2
That's a well written list of an expert - chapeau!

Triplanar for 2D procedurals would be nice.
And grouping in material graph  with color codes would help a lot.
Improvement to the ray mask, so it is released feature.

Just my thoughts.


CheerEO
Marco

mafrieger

#3
simply: +1

btw: some comments pointing in the same direction of "maturity and optimizing of existing/core" could also be found in this topic (by same and additional forum members...)
https://forum.keyshot.com/index.php?topic=28277.0

KristofDeHulsters

+1 Will, I agree with you completely about Keyshot keeping to their core. I find that there are still a lot of improvements that can be made there instead of introducing VR, AR, ... which has a much smaller application at this time (maybe that will be different in 5-10y from now).

Some things that I would like to see resolved:
- My resolution switching to one pixel smaller in the Render panel than what I set it to before (it's annoying)
- Region render resetting when going into the Render panel (it's annoying)
- Improvements on the match perspective tool
- Being able to use color adjust/color composite on bump maps
- Improvements to the Unwrap UV Tool (so we can actually see the islands)
- Super basic texture painting (I've posted about this before), even just something to paint some opacity maps with would be enough

These are the things that I would have an immediate need for. They're small, but they take frustration away and prevent me switching to different softwares.

mafrieger

Another point where a little rework seems to be helpful: efficient usage of GPU in animation: https://forum.keyshot.com/index.php?topic=28389.0

Allan

Yes please!:
QuoteFirelfy filter & denoise on a per-material basis

I like firefly removal and denoise. But it would be so great to be able to control it more, since it is often only some materials that need it.

quigley

Yes agree 100%.
One area that needs work is native CAD file import via plug ins.
Fact is, if you take Solidworks as an example (and there are a lot of us), there are things that just don't work well or reliably. Like assembly cuts, multi body part structures, naming in the Scene tree, updating geometry via live linking. It gets to the point the to ensure reliable transfer we use STEP...which defeats the benefits of using Keyshot.
And don't start me on the Fusion plug ins.
I used to celebrate the benefit of having a standalone rendering solution but honestly, having used VRay in Rhino and built in rendering in Inspire Studio I'm starting to favour a return to in CAD solutions.
I guess it is a time thing. Keyshot, when it works is quick and easy. When you are doing lots of updates though it gets painful. It is not the no brainer choice it once was.

hexgraphica

Better scaling handles when in move object mode

The ability to scale from pivot by just checking a box, instead of going into move object mode, click on the axis and input the value in the box at the top of the tab

Detect and set origin tool, for objects that already come rotated and have part-centered textures (like tires), so that texture will align with their local reference system and not the global one

PerFotoVDB

#9
I would like to add:

- An invisible to camera mode on an object level but still render.
This way I can render ground shadows running under object without them being cut out
- environment per group/object. This way I can light wheels and carbody with a different hdri. (see Deltagen)
- cutaway include mode
- UVW randomizer (like vray) or a randomizer map working in every mapping mode
- RGB mask with object/material mode (clown pass gives unwanted edges or at least change clown to crytomatte)
- Overscan mode on the camera (2d zoom). Often I have the right cam but need more image space around it.

+ the big ones:
- faster rendering in CPU and gpu
- geometry instancing system
- expression node based animation system like c4d expresso

INNEO_MWo

An invisible to camera mode on an object level but still render --> example done with ray mask (experimental feature / does not work in GPU mode)

PerFotoVDB

Exactly @INNEO_MWo! A ray mask or ray switcher :)

Will Gibbons

I'm going to heap a few more on this list...

- Falloff modes for spotlight (quadratic, linear, exponential... whatever's available for pins in HDRI editor)
- Built in barn door feature for area lights (like a slider that would focus the beams and limit the spreading of the light)
- Set highlight feature for physical lights (point and click to direct physical light)

mattjgerard

Quote from: KristofDeHulsters on November 08, 2021, 07:10:02 AM
- My resolution switching to one pixel smaller in the Render panel than what I set it to before (it's annoying)

That is so freaking annoying! No idea why it does that. Set iamge size to 3200x2400, go to render and its 3200x2399. And it doesn't do it all the time.

Also to add,

-open up every tool and function to have a keyboard short cut assigned. My Streamdeck is screaming for more shortcuts to program.
-Make the Preview Mode have a clay option so I don't have to open the geometry editor. I don't need specular and reflections when I'm just trying to move stuff around. Make it dumb diffuse materials and fast.
- Make a keyboard shortcut to open a pop up search field for searching for a tool, function, setting, etc. C4D has this and its brilliant. I never have to go into the menus to find something.
- UV unwrapping makes zero sense, and there are not very many tutorials to learn from, and the ones that are there are using simple already optimized models, not the complicated junk I have to deal with.
- More usability in the scene tree, like be able to cut and paste objects from once place in the tree to another so I don't have to click and scrooooooooooolllllll through a huge list of objects to move something
- Reorder cameras in the camera tab. can't right now.
- have the color picker pop up under the mouse. Mine constantly pops up on the far side of my second monitor.
- Add some simple geometry deformers, for me i would use them for using a cylinder object and run cables around machines with bend deformers.
- add an extrude option for labels to add some depth to labels.
- In the scene tree search, don't show me the enclosing folders for the objects I'm searching for. I only want to see the objects that match my search, not the parent folders/objects. makes it hard to select them all and apply changes.

Anindo Ghosh

To add to the wishlist of usability features:

-  Vector image formats as texture map inputs: SVG, EPS, and hopefully AI files
- "decal" implementation of labels: Where the label is not bound to the material but to the position on an object. That way, one material could be used across collections of objects that share a material, with different text or image textures for each - like different bar code labels on each unit in a stack of objects.
-  Multi-Color node that works like "multi-material" in Material Graph, so that "color ways" can be rendered for a model, keeping labels and other attributes of the material constant - A huge usability optimization when rendering hundreds of different color variants of a scene for commercial product rendering work.
- Additional utility nodes applicable to Texture Map nodes, like the existing "Color Adjust", "Color Invert" etc, for simple adjustments like "gaussian blur". This would alleviate the frequent need for a base texture image, and a blurred texture image, when implementing a text or logo emboss or deboss effect.