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KeyShot 3D Rendering Software Now Fully Supports Stratasys Full-Color, Multi-Material 3D Printers

Almost any product designer will tell you that prototyping the shape of a new design with 3D printing is pretty easy. But accurately simulating color, material and finish, or “CMF,” can take serious time and money. Not anymore. Thanks to the latest KeyShot 10 3D rendering software and Stratasys Ltd.’s (NASDAQ: SSYS) J55 and J8 Series 3D printers, it’s little more than just click and print.

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Designers can now 3D print in full color and textures like wood right from KeyShot software to Stratasys PolyJet printers. (Photo: Business Wire)

The full-color, multi-material Stratasys 3D printers and the latest version of KeyShot from Luxion both now support the new 3MF file format, a significant improvement over legacy STL, OBJ, and VRML files. By saving designs to 3MF, KeyShot 10 produces files ready for printing, with accurate colors and bump/displacement maps to three-dimensionally simulate textures like fabric and wood. Additional enhancements are planned for 2021.

Columbus, Ohio-based Priority Designs was a beta user of the new KeyShot 10 capabilities using the office-friendly J55 3D printer. Erik Fickas, senior industrial designer, said the speed and simplicity with which they can 3D print a collection of design options is completely new.

“We developed this Bluetooth speaker model and used KeyShot to add all the textures like the speaker grill, then just saved to the new 3MF file format for 3D printing,” Fickas said. “Overnight, we had five different models with five different wood samples and different fabric samples. To rapid prototype a wood texture would have been a heck of a lot of work. It’s really incredible what we can do now.”

Stratasys estimates that 3MF support with KeyShot can reduce 3D print modeling time of CMF models to a single day, while traditional modeling for final iterations can take from one to three weeks. The new workflow enables the CMF design phase to start earlier in the design process, helping bring new products to market faster, and also keeps modeling in-house to reduce risk of intellectual property loss.

“The J55 made true full-color, multi-material 3D printing accessible to design studios everywhere, but to fully transform how products are designed, we needed to make the whole workflow simple,” said Stratasys Vice President of Design Shamir Shoham. “Adding KeyShot support in our PolyJet 3D printers adds an additional advantage compared to designers who are only using 3D printing for concept designs and turning to slower and expensive traditional models for detailed designs.”