Among other industries that have seen a rapid change due to the implementation of additive manufacturing, jewelry designers are able to create entirely different forms that, even up until a few years ago, were too costly to implement into a day-to-day workflow. Between the combination of generative modeling software and various methods of small-scale 3D…

We are cooking with gas now people! Hot off the press. The 3D Manufacturing Format (3MF) file type is about to go prime-time owing to KeyShot and Stratasys. This dynamic duo is bringing an honest to goodness CMF experience to early-stage physical prototyping. For those not familiar, the 3MF format could be likened to a…

It wasn’t too long ago when the concept of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and the capabilities of generative design seemed like some far off sci-fi future. Yet, both technologies are alive and kicking in 2019—and they came together recently to test the implementation of generative design and additive manufacturing capabilities in the field of UAVs.…

Designing products for clients on your own is fun—but it’s not without risks. For one, there’s the time pressure that comes from working for a company or client; while you have the creative freedom to work with vague guidelines, having to start from scratch can be a daunting challenge for the uninitiated. Second, with great…

What in the world is a “Squircle” you might ask? Well, its a cross between a square and a circle. Designers the world over admire the squircle because it gives us a lot of form exploration range. If I want a product to be perceived as stately or strong I might adjust the squircle more…

It was only back on August 23rd when the master 3D rendering virtuosos at Luxion teased us with a drool-worthy highlight reel capturing what’s to come with the much-anticipated KeyShot 8. And tease us they did—with stunning rendering work featuring everybody from Peter Gill and Esben Oxholm to Dries Vervoort: https://youtu.be/Y6CPCm3kdlU Well, the time is…

When it comes to knock-their-socks off CG work, Esben Oxholm is a force to be reckoned with. With a background in both industrial design engineering and lighting design, it’s safe to say that his product visualizations rank up there among the best of ’em. And like other great industrial designers, Esben takes the time to…

Few tools are as indispensable in the design engineer’s toolbox as a solid product visualization tool. After all, why wouldn’t you want to see your model rendered beautifully after hours of modeling in a drab CAD modeling environment? And for many industrial designers, mechanical engineers, and artists today, KeyShot is the go-to tool for its…

Today, we’re bringing back a segment that lapsed into a coma and suddenly awoke recently with a direct punch to an exposed solar plexus. Model of the Week: the best and coolest 3D models the SolidSmack audience is creating and sharing online. We’re in the future now, so there’s loads of amazingness and brilliance we…

As the fastest road bike on the planet with wicked-cool industrial design, the new Specialized S-Works Venge is also one of the most technologically advanced bikes ever made. Needless to say, Specialized didn’t want to skimp on the marketing for this one. In an effort to engage their audience beyond photos and videos on their…

Used by everyone from concept artists to industrial designers and architects to mechanical engineers, Luxion’s KeyShot has been a go-to rendering package for thousands of 3D modelers for good reason – it just works. While the release of KeyShot 5 last year brought us dozens of new bells and whistles to play with ranging from…

When it comes to CAD software, ZBrush, like many other types of digital sculpting software, can oftentimes be compared to the odd friend in the group that nobody really knows well, but always wants to be better friends with. Most often used by character designers and conceptual artists, the extremely powerful digital ‘clay’ modeler is…

When it comes to configuring that ideal computer for your 3D design needs, every last little bit of power can help. However, when you’re working within a set budget, the challenge of swapping some components for others can become a tedious task that sometimes feels more like rocket science than a ‘fun’ build project. Earlier…

With recent major updates including the addition of Sørensen Leather’s entire 289-count material library onto Keyshot Cloud, Luxion’s popular KeyShot rendering package has never provided as much flexibility, power and resources as their latest KeyShot 5.1 release offers. It comes with little surprise then, that the winners of the recent 2014 KeyShot Rendering Contest have…

Last week, it was announced that Luxion was updating their popular Keyshot 5 rendering platform to make your CAD rendering game even more flexible and powerful. The update includes everything from new procedural textures and options, support for the growing lineup of multi-touch PCs, Apple Retina Display support and more. Yesterday, Denmark-based Sørensen Leather released…

Whether you consider yourself a car nut or not (go home Jay Leno), it’s hard not to appreciate the level of detail that goes into vehicle renderings. While any well-executed rendering can be a sight to behold no matter the type of content, automobiles are in a category by themselves due to the multiple material…

It’s not very often when you come across an industrial designer who has a desire to bring what is commonly hidden by a panel or housing out into the open in all of its glorious and mechanical gleam. Such is the case with industrial designer Simon Williamson. The Britain-born designer honed his chops at Frog…

For those who have had the time to get their feet wet in Autodesk’s Cloud-based CAD platform Fusion 360, you might have been missing a few ingredients from your previous workflow in another CAD package…particularly in the rendering department. On Wednesday October 9th, that problem will be solved after the announcement this morning that Luxion…

When I’m wrestling a ham and cheese sandwich in 3 inches of water, I’m not paying attention to anyone else around me. There are already devices to get people like me out of the pool (tazers hurt) but there are just not enough (read: any) device that take advantage of modern technology to save the…

Creating delectable looking food and drink items in solid modeling software like SolidWorks may not be your routine, but it is possible and if you ever need to drench either with dew or a generous amount of condensation, there’s a quick, painless, highly repetitive (click, click, click) method for applying water droplets to the surfaces…

Luxion is dishing out a a slew of render tech this week at SIGGRAPH 2012 and even though I work for the company, it’s a refreshing look at visualization on the web. Visualization I didn’t think we, in the 3D world, wouldn’t see so soon. A couple weeks ago, I caught the first glimpse of…

If you’re part of a minibus fanclub or have often thought of joining an electric minibus revolution, this new concept from design group Entastudio, may make the cut to go on all your event flyers. Oktay Türkoglu and Ramazan Kaya are the founders of the studio, heading up the five person group based out of…

A beam of light has shot from the east, through my window, reflecting off a large bottle of whiskey milk sitting in front of me and directly into my eyes. Your custom HDRI dreams are about to get a lot more custom and a lot more powerful. HDR Light Studio 3.0 has been released by…

If you’ve ever mistakenly drank ferromagnetic fluid thinking it was coffee, you’re likely dead, or highly magnetized and sitting at In-n-Out gnawing on a burger dressed like Magneto. I am… right now actually, staring into the screen at the Kickstarter project David Markus has launched. Ferrite – Interactive Liquid Sculpture is a visual display of…

Hear that noise? No? That’s because it’s the sound of stunned silence emanating from all those who’ve been waiting and clamoring for their favorite real-time rendering program to bring the simplicity and ease of photo-rendering to their world of… animation. Well, prepare for the shock-wave that’s about to peel your keyframin’ fingers right off… Luxion…

Have you ever tried to render glorious rays of light with your mind? It can’t be done (unless you have a perfect mix of abysynth and electricity.) In lieu of that you’ll want some easily adjustable, totally customizable HDR images to slap in your renderings. That’s where HDR Light Studio comes in. They’ve developed a…

I’m convinced ‘Reality’ is a guy named Milo with a spray tan and a well-groomed mustache. He gets up at 6am to have a semi-artificial, vitamin D fortified breakfast, then heads off to work to sit at his laminated desk for 10 hours, during which time he rocks out ultra photo-realistic renderings. He may use…

There are times in life where you think up a design, so simple, so magnificent, it could change the properties OF THE UNIVERSE ITSELF… and then suck everyone into an awesome design crushing vortex. However, if one takes the power of that idea, shares it with some friends and enters it into the Staples Eco…

Hey, there’s nothing like an industry brief on technology that pushes your agenda. amirite? Yeah for agendas! and YEAH for CPU’s and the power they have to push the limits of rendering. Huzzah!! Hugs for multi-core and hugs for photon-dicin’ render divas showing us what kind of power the CPU has to do it. Among…

Our models. They’re dead… dead, pasty monoliths of engineering excellence plagued by the cold touch of a default color scheme. It must end. You must show the world what you’ve got and as the result, risk the chance of winning the ultimate in speed rendering technology, a license of KeyShot 2 Pro. GrabCAD and KeyShot…

Honestly I can’t get enough of what people are able to do with some of the rendering programs of late. Especially with KeyShot 2.1 we covered last week. Al at Develop 3D took a rip through KeyShot 2.1 as well. His overview, rendering results and the video he slapped together (after the jump) are nothing…

One of my favorite things to do in the morning is bake the plastic off the CPU cores in the ol’ computer and there’s nothing like a little rendering action to make that happen. As I write this, my CPU is maxed out at 100% while KeyShot 2.1 creates some of the renderings you’ll see…

You know the comments you keep hearing? No, not the ones about how you look in tight pants. The ones about how good the product you design would look if you only had a good rendering. Once upon a time, a simple rendering seemed impossible. No more. Over the past few years, creating amazing renderings…

Well, I don’t know about you, but it’s been a tense couple of weeks watching the entries come in for the iPad model rendering challenge. The wait is over… Or is it? YES, it is! All together we had 28 submissions and over 50 renderings from people using a variety of top-notch rendering tools -…

I’m not sure if you’ve experienced the joys of working as a fry cook in a back alley noodle house, but if you have, you’ll greatly appreciate the artistry it takes to design those chicken tender lovin’ mesh buckets. There’s a lot that goes into shaping that sheet metal and jabbing electronics in like a…

Why it was only a month ago that Hypershot fans around the world were up in arms about the news of Bunkspeed losing the licensing for the tech behind Hypershot to it’s creators at Luxion. We knew but one thing, Luxion would be developing and launching a new release… shortly. Well, shortly is here and…