For over 25 years I have been creating 3D graphics and renders for NASCAR Teams and sponsors. For 22 of those years I have used 3DSMAX as my render engine. In 2020 I made the switch to Blender and Keyshot as my primary software packages and ditched 3DSMAX for good. Why? Cost of software for one, needing separate render engines on top of the software cost was also a concern. The market is saturated in the 3D area, and thus there are tons of “artists” out there using pirated copies, etc and thus undercutting prices of “Licensed” artists. So I had to look for a cheaper alternative, because Its hard to pay $5,000 a year when you can only charge $75/$150 render due to competition in the marketplace.
Enter Blender and Keyshot. I know Keyshot was not primarily designed for this type of work, However, Keyshot combined with Blender and the ability to export models from the Old MAX and get them into Keyshot or Blender was a great option.
I also liked the abilities of Keyshot in the way of Web-App Viewer, interactive HTML 5 etc… So this made my choice easy. I looked at C4D and others, but that just seemed like I was getting “Locked” into another ecosystem again, and not an affordable one.
With Keyshot I was able to create realistic looking mockups pretty quickly, especially with the drag and drop materials feature. I love the render preview, even though I wish there was a way to lower the amount of samples in the render preview to a certain number instead of taxing the CPU or GPU indefinitely. But every software has its “man I wish it did this” moments…
Here are a few of the renders i have done in Keyshot for NASCAR clients:
