Thursday, May 9th, 2019 Posted by Jim Thacker

Luxion ships KeyVR


Luxion has released KeyVR, a “one-click solution for VR experiences” based on its KeyShot renderer.

The new application makes it possible to explore KeyShot scenes in virtual reality using a standard head-mounted display, changing model sets, materials or environments interactively.

View any existing KeyShot scene in virtual reality
Luxion is pitching KeyVR both as a new way for product designers and 3D artists to assess designs – much as with the new VR toolset in Modo – and as a way to present them to clients.

As with KeyShot itself, ease of use is a guiding principle: users simply set up a scene in the normal way inside the renderer, then click a button to export it to KeyVR as a readymade virtual reality experience.

That should mean there is much less need to manually process geometry or materials for viewing in VR than with alternative solutions like viewing the scene inside a game engine.

The demo above shows a very simple environment, but Luxion says that KeyVR is “optimised for VR viewing, and capable of loading large data sets”, so it will be interesting to see how complex a scene it can handle and still maintain good interactive performance.

The software is built on the core framework of KeyShot itself for features like asset loading.

Updated 4 June 2019: The original version of this story stated that KeyVR supported real-time ray tracing like KeyShot itself, but Luxion has been in touch to say that this is not the case.

Basic interactivity without coding
Once in KeyVR, the scene can be viewed using an HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or Windows Mixed Reality headset, navigating using standard teleport or flight behaviours, or via cameras previously set up in KeyShot.

It’s also possible to switch between variant models or materials set up in KeyShot from within virtual reality, or to play back KeyShot animations.

Users can also enable gravity and rigid-body dynamics for scene objects: the physics behaviours are created automatically, without the need for coding.

Pricing and system requirements
KeyVR is available for Windows 7+ only. As well as exporting scenes directly from KeyShot 8, it can load files in KeyShot’s native .ksp or .bip formats.

The software is rental-only, and is priced at $995/year.

KeyShot itself costs costs $995 for the base HD edition, $1,995 for the Pro edition, and $3,995 for the Enterprise edition. You can find a feature comparison table here.

Read more about KeyVR on Luxion’s product website