The design process requires you to do more than create gorgeous visuals every step of the way – you also need to manage feedback, which can feel like another job entirely. Lucky for you, we’ve gathered tried-and-true tips for managing stakeholders and getting the most helpful feedback while making your own workflow easier. 

#1 Increase the artistry and detail as your product concept becomes closer to completed. 

This saves you from wasting time and energy on concepts too early in development, and helps stakeholders feel more confident in final products. 

• Don’t create gorgeous, photo-realistic visuals for the first few concepts. Use the toon material to show the outline, form and function of the product concept in early versions. 
• Save your most impressive renderings for the final versions. 

#2 Use animations or exploded views to showcase product design, engineering and functionality.

Consider short animations or exploded views as your best friends for presentations or feedback.

• Camera keyframing allows users to create more complex animations than simple turn tables and pan in and out effects, which are typically used. Being able to quickly keyframe camera positions lets you show off details and key elements of a design without the need for understanding more advanced animation techniques. 

• If you’re looking for visuals that will blow minds, a short, exploded view animation always leaves an impact. KeyShot Studio also supports importation of motion studies from SolidWorks, providing another level of communication when coupled with exploded view animations. 

#3 Boost the photorealism of your visuals with a few simple tricks. 

• Depth of field can be used both in static images and in animations to significantly increase the realism of a scene. Photos naturally have some level of falloff due to a camera’s aperture, so by adding depth of field, you can subtly convince the viewer that what they see is an image of a real object. 
• Use ground planes to create seamless product backgrounds. 
• Rendering on GPU can often be much faster than CPU. Because of this, KeyShot Studio users can afford to increase the sample count of GPU render outputs to further maximize the quality of the final result. 

#4 Working on a tight deadline? Get a speed boost.

• Color blocking parts in CAD by assigning the same color to parts of a model that will share the same materials, significantly speeds up the process of materializing a model in KeyShot. This creates a link between those parts prior to importation of the model, ensuring that when one part receives a material update, all parts that share the same color block are updated as well. 
• Adding Network Rendering to KeyShot Studio is an excellent and affordable way to dramatically reduce your rendering time.  

#5 Use KeyShot Web or KeyShot Hub to make it extra easy for your client, manager or other “approvers” to view the concept and provide feedback.

• KeyShot Web allows viewers to see a concept in different views and colorways, as well as via AR/VR. 
• KeyShot Hub, the new tool for design teams, makes tracking feedback easy. Hub allows you to quickly send out several renderings to stakeholders, consolidates feedback into one place and can automatically save versions, ensuring no work is lost. 

KeyShot rendering in the header by Tommy Cheong.

We recently updated you on our broader vision to reinvent the way products are brought to market, and today we’re introducing KeyShot Hub, a first step towards unifying design teams in the product design-to-market journey.  

After decades of working with design teams of all sizes, we know that creating beautiful designs takes more than artistic talent. Your team needs to work together, incorporate feedback, keep track of specifications and revise, revise, revise. 

With KeyShot Hub, your team will have even more support to cover everything it takes to get the job done.  Improve collaboration, streamline workflows, and track iterations, all in one centralized place. With KeyShot Hub, you can focus your energy on what you do best: designing impactful products that customers love. 

KeyShot Hub: Designed for design teams 

It’s no wonder that design teams are struggling to manage their work today. With files stored on separate computers, feedback provided in separate channels, and versions frequently changing, it’s easy for important information to get lost, and it’s hard for team members to navigate the chaos together. After hearing about these challenges from designers in teams of all sizes, KeyShot developers came up with a solution: KeyShot Hub. 

Organized project assets

KeyShot Hub connects design teams to work together on projects and library assets. Team members can work directly from the Hub to access their KeyShot Studio data (materials, scenes, renderings) as well as manage other project files such as CAD models and Adobe files. 

• Centralize project files and library data 

• Safeguard designers from creating duplicate files and data 

• Ensure all team members work on the most recent files  

Centralized feedback

It’s easy to lose important feedback when it’s delivered via a variety of channels – email, messages, meetings. Hub makes it easy to keep track of all feedback in one place. Reviewers can make notes directly on the visuals, so feedback is never lost in the shuffle.  

• Entire team can view, comment and understand design decisions 

• Annotation tool allows reviewers to make comments directly on visuals  

• Save time and avoid confusion 

Stay synced between KeyShot Studio and KeyShot Hub

Adjustments made to Hub-based assets (materials, textures, models) are automatically updated in KeyShot Studio libraries, ensuring everyone is working on the right content. 

• Publish documentation directly to KeyShot Hub from KeyShot Studio  

• Adjustments made to Hub-based assets and tags are reflected in Studio libraries 

• Delete or create new tags for KeyShot-generated documents and assets within Studio and Hub 

Details make all the difference

You know that details make or break a design. We’ve carefully honed the features in KeyShot Hub to help your design team with every task in their workflow. 

Check in/check out files 

“Check out” files to prevent others from making changes and check them back in when finished, preventing file corruption and unnecessary overlap 

Version history, audit trail & quick side-by-side comparisons 

Hub provides an automated time history of file versions. Roll back to previous versions when needed and look at the audit trail to see who has accessed or changed files. 

Hub also provides a way for you to quickly compare visuals side-by-side with changes automatically identified from the metadata. Instead of having to open similar images in another application like Photoshop, in Hub you can select two images to scrub side-to-side to see the visual differences, and you can also select any two files to compare the metadata and the Hub system will highlight any differences between the files. 

Flexible tagging  

Not only can you categorize and sub-categorize files and data in KeyShot Hub, but files can be represented in multiple locations as a single file. This was created to dramatically reduce the need for duplicate or copied content, providing an easy-to-search database that can be organized by team, project, product, or brand. 

Share multiple assets easily 

Need to send out several images for review? Hub allows you to select multiple assets and send them out as a link or a “collection.” The recipient doesn’t need access to Hub to view and download the assets, and you can set an optional security setting to revoke access after a set date.  

Design teams have needs that go beyond basic file storage

The static filing systems you have relied on in the past simply aren’t sufficient to manage thousands of renderings and revisions. KeyShot Hub was created to keep your team together every step of the way, as the central place for ideas to converge, evolve and come to life. 

You know what we like to say: We bring the tools; you bring the talent. KeyShot Studio (formerly KeyShot) 2024.2 is now available, featuring several updates to improve efficiency and creativity in your day-to-day workflow. 

Import glTF animation files into KeyShot Studio 

Node animations saved in glTF 2.0 can now be imported into KeyShot Studio. If the glTF file to be imported has an animation attached, simply select the “Import Animations” check box when importing. (Skeletal or morph animations are not supported.) 

Export Preview added to Web Viewer + more materials supported

Say goodbye to the guesswork: Now when you’re preparing renderings for a design review with Web Viewer, you can see a preview of how your work will appear, allowing you to adjust the scene as needed before processing the final upload. Also, all Web Viewer uploads are now processed using texture baking.  

Another upgrade to Web Viewer is material matching. The materials that now look identical in the Web Viewer account for 96% of the material usages in actual KeyShot Studio scenes (according to KeyShot analytics).  

Move Tool improvements

You asked, we answered. The Move Tool is now more user-friendly for your convenience. The first notable change is that the position entry boxes are now always visible while the tool is active. The second is that the XYZ axis within the window are now color coded and correlate directly with the corresponding axis on the Move Tool Gizmo.

Additionally, with the Axis Lock-In, it is now possible to lock the Move Tool Gizmo along the X,Y or Z axes by toggling the radio button next to each individual axis in the Move Tool Window. When toggled, the axis locks to the mouse cursor for more refined movements along that specific axis. 

New hotkeys have been introduced to help (and can be customized or changed in Preferences):  

• T: Translate gizmo
• R: Rotate gizmo
• S: Scale gizmo
• X: lock into the X-axis
• Y: lock into the Y-axis
• Z: lock into the Z-axis
• Import updates  

Plus, these common CAD formats are now supported:

• Sketchup 2024
• CATIA V5 3D Read: V5-6R2024
• Parasolid 3D V36.1
• NX 2312 Series (until 2312.4000)