Industry Summary Articles

X-Rite Incorporated and its subsidiary Pantone LLC announce that Luxion’s KeyShot® software for 3D rendering and animation natively supports the Appearance Exchange Format (AxF™). Developed by X-Rite, AxF is a vendor-neutral format that enables full communication of visual appearance data in a single, editable file to improve the design virtualization process. KeyShot support of AxF allows users to create the highest quality product visuals and imagery using physically accurate digital material data. X-Rite will showcase the AxF integration at Luxion’s international customer conference, KeyShot RenderWorld 2017, May 15th and 16th at the Paséa Hotel & Spa in Huntington Beach, California.

“A primary differentiator and key feature of KeyShot is the ability to create high-quality visuals using scientifically accurate materials,” says Henrik Wann Jensen, Chief Scientist and Co-founder, Luxion. “Along with the vast material capabilities in KeyShot, support for X-Rite’s AxF files format allows users to accurately and consistently represent the complex material properties of their scanned textures for an endless number of materials, providing even greater realism in communicating their product visuals.”

“Traditionally, capture and virtual rendering of complex materials such as special effects paints, meshes and synthetic fabrics are a time-consuming, manual process,” says Dr. Francis Lamy, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, X-Rite and Pantone. “AxF helps address this challenge by providing a common language for communicating material appearance characteristics such as color, texture, gloss, transparency and opacity of physical materials in the virtual world. KeyShot’s integration of AxF enables users to quickly and accurately create amazing visuals for a truly lifelike virtual experience.”

KeyShot is a stand-alone real-time rendering application for both Mac and PC designed to make the process of creating 3D renderings and animations extremely fast. The real-time speed allows you to see everything as it happens within a workflow-based interface to achieve photographic results in minutes. As a CPU-based rendering engine with advanced lighting and material creation capabilities, KeyShot provides the performance and flexibility that allows it to integrate seamlessly throughout the entire product development process.

In its second year, KeyShot RenderWorld gathers KeyShot users from around the world to learn from other 3D professionals. This year’s conference features keynote speaker Chip Foose, a look at KeyShot 7, and presentations by KeyShot users from Bose, Caterpillar, Sonos, Stanley Black & Decker and others. 

TAC Captures Physical Material Appearance at KeyShot RenderWorld
KeyShot RenderWorld 2017 attendees can see a demonstration of X-Rite’s award-winning Total Appearance Capture (TAC™) ecosystem and the AxF integration with KeyShot at the X-Rite booth.

The TAC ecosystem is comprised of the TAC7 scanner, PANTORA™ Material Hub desktop application, and Virtual Light Booth (VLB). Physical material samples are scanned using the TAC7 scanner, which captures appearance properties digitally to create AxF files that store appearance data. The files are stored, managed, viewed and edited in the PANTORA desktop application. The AxF files can be shared with Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), Computer-Aided Design (CAD), and state-of-the art rendering applications, such as KeyShot. Show attendees will have an opportunity to see how AxF files can be used within the KeyShot software and applied to rendering and animation.

The recently announced VLB is the industry’s first immersive virtual light booth that allows users to accurately and efficiently visualize and compare 3D digital material renderings side-by-side with physical samples. The VLB combines X-Rite’s SpectraLight QC professional light booth technology with a high-brightness, color-calibrated LCD display, color management technology, and motion tracking sensors. This allows the VLB viewing environment to control all parameters that influence the perception of appearance from illumination to contextual to observational factors. With the VLB, design teams can easily vary these conditions to see changes in material performance. This helps ensure consistency between digital prototypes and final physical products. Designers can make more informed material selections reducing approval cycles and accelerating time to market.

To view the original press release, please click here.

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