Creating your first product fast with KeyShot – 6 tips to get you started
Using KeyShot should be an exciting new experience from start to finish. Everyone will have their own unique way of working however, there are some tips and tricks that all good product designers can adopt in their work.
Getting Started with Materials
Trying to get a material looking as realistic as possible can be tricky, to begin with, but once you start focusing on the small details this can soon become second nature. In the real-world environment, nothing is perfect, there are all sorts of factors such as scratches, dust and dirt. In the virtual world of course we have the power to replicate perfection, and thus must incorporate this into our rendering. Using KeyShot’s material editing capabilities we can build up a material using various textures, ultimately adding in the imperfections we’d see in the real world!
A close-up of jean material.
Adding Realism with Textures
Once you’ve added in your base material to get started with it tends to look quite flat in relation to a real-world image. We can now start applying multiple textures onto our material which can create the desired effects such as scratches or a hammered metal look. Textures can be applied on top of one another to greater improve the model’s realism. This will be vital when it comes to lighting as all the imperfections that have been added will be highlighted by shadows or reflections.
Making Use of Lighting
Lighting within KeyShot is a very powerful feature and is instrumental in adding shadows and highlights to your scene. Within KeyShot there are plenty of lighting environments to utilise which help with lighting up your model from multiple angles. This in turn will increase the realism of your render and ensure it is eye-catching.
A camera with lighting added to the render.
Utilising Cameras
When creating a scene in KeyShot cameras can be pivotal in the overall composition. Positioning your model correctly in the scene can help create a more powerful render, so when getting started in KeyShot it’s ideal to get everything in the correct position as this serves as a great starting point for your image. There are also handy camera effects within KeyShot that can heighten your render. Depth of field is a useful one that can closely mimic real-life cameras. It draws the observer’s focus to the model and blurs the background or parts of the model which are further away. This effect is commonly seen in macro images where the part being focused on is either very small or very close to the camera, similar to how your eyes focus on striking objects.
Creating Animations
Animations are a great addition to KeyShot and bring greater realism to your scene as we can mimic how a model would work in the real world. Whether it’s to create an exploded animation of your product or to show moving mechanisms, KeyShot can easily create these. When creating animations it’s important to consider that the simpler the animation is usually better, as this can have more of an impact and won’t draw attention away from the model itself.
One last tip!
Make use of a ground plane in your scene and be sure to apply a material to it. This will help add depth to the scene and helps to stop the model look like it’s floating!
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