KeyShot vs Blender: Which One Should You Choose?

In the last few years, there has been significant advancement in 3D modeling, rendering, and animation. Considering so many features and aspects can make selecting the proper software difficult. Which would you prefer, Keyshot or Blender? There are several factors to consider while deciding between Keyshot vs Blender. This may depend on each 3D artist’s demand. In this blog, Chip Render will discuss some major features of both Keyshot vs Blender to see what each offers.

Keyshot

KeyShot is a professional 3D rendering software that widely creates 3D renderings, animations, and interactive visuals. This is a powerful tool that helps users create vivid 3D images from 3D models, for example from CAD files. Its capabilities such as global lighting, multi-core mapping, stand-alone, real-time ray-tracing, and virtual reality make creating interactive visualizations, 3D renderings, animations, and visual effects extremely simple. 

KeyShot provides many functions and tools to create natural, realistic, and beautiful 3D images without the need for in-depth knowledge of rendering or design.

Blender

Blender is a free and open-source 3D software widely used in the fields of 3D graphics, animation, and special effects. This is a versatile application with powerful features for creating 3D modeling, animation, and special effects, as well as 3D rendering. Blender offers a wide range of creative tools and a large creative community, as well as being freely available for anyone to use. This helps Blender become one of the popular tools in the 3D graphics community. 

While both software are effective in providing comparable benefits to users, their comparison should be based on suitability for a certain project or user, rather than a general assessment of each software. Therefore, it will be essential to understand the features of Blender and KeyShot to decide which one would be appropriate for your projects.

Rendering Capabilities

Image Source: Blender.org

Blender is well-known for its complex rendering techniques which make use of strong rendering cycles. The software uses a production render engine based on ray tracing, which provides multi-core rendering with SIMD acceleration and route tracing. By using this feature, users can see lighting and texture in real time for scenarios or environments. 

Because the render engine in KeyShot uses the most sophisticated lighting, it is famous for providing a flexible, quick, and effective rendering experience. Moreover, Global lighting and multi-core mapping in the software enable users to see their works in real-time. Also, KeyShot uses both CPU and GPU power during rendering cycles, giving customers the option to select the amount of power from both virtual and physical sources.

User Interface

Although KeyShot’s user interface is straightforward and very flexible, it also offers a wealth of functionality for more experienced users. To easily transition between multiple layouts, you can save presets and scale, position, and conceal elements, panels, and tabs.

Blender’s user interface offers flexibility, customization, and utilities. However, it can take time to get used to due to the variety of tools and functions that Blender offers.

Image Source: KeyShot

Asset Creation

If you’re an artist looking to create something special, Blender is an excellent software option. Whether their designs are realistic or not, users can customize them. Besides, 3D artists can express their creativity with features like instancing, volume, curves, meshes, and more. 

With KeyShot, users may use a variety of textures and materials to create photorealistic graphics. Using Gloss values and Cie-Lab colors, KeyShot even enables customers to match their textures and materials with suppliers like Mold-Tech, Axalta Coating Systems, and Sorensen Leather. Realistic color adaptations can also be achieved with reliable color libraries like Pantone and RAL. 

Time and Workflow

Blender helps users optimize their workflow with many tools, automated processes, and add-ons, but it still takes time and effort to set up everything from scratch. 

KeyShot is proud of being a software solution that produces excellent results very quickly. It also has a workflow-based, simple interface that is incredibly functional.

With its import pipeline, LiveLinking technology, and broad partnership network, it provides customers with the advantage of directly importing data from applications. With the help of these tools, users can easily integrate changes to models and scenes into ongoing sessions, saving them time and effort.

Image Source: Keyshot

Recommend System Requirements

Blender

Because Blender is cross-platform, it can be used with all major operating systems such as Windows, macOS, and Linux.

For Windows: 

• Operating system: Windows 8.1( 64-bit), Windows 10 or 11
• CPU: 4 Cores with SSE4.2 support, 8 Cores
• GPU: 2GB VRAM with OpenGL4.3, 8GB
• RAM: 8GB-32GB

For macOS

• Operating system: macOS 11.2, macOS 14
• CPU: Apple Silicon or Intel
• GPU: Metal 2.2
• RAM: 8GB-32GB

For Linux

• Operating system: Distribution with glibc 2.28 or newer( 64-bit)
• CPU: 4 Cores with SSE4.2 support
• GPU: 2GB VRAM with OpenGL4.3
• RAM: 8GB-32GB

Keyshot

KeyShot operates quickly on even the most powerful computers or the most basic hardware setups to maximize the use of all CPU cores and grow performance linearly. Here are the system requirements and minimum suggestions for the most recent version of KeyShot to get you started.

General

• 64-bit platform
• 2GB RAM
• 2GB Disk Space
• Dual-core CPU 1, 2
• Internet connection (to activate product)
• Intel or AMD 64-bit processor with SSE4.1 or higher
• OpenGL 2.0 capable system.

Operating system

• Windows 10 or 11
• Windows Server 2016 and above
• macOS 10.15 Catalina or higher

Learning Curves

Although using Blender needs a lot of time, effort, and learning curves, the process of learning and personal growth can prove to be quite beneficial. Using Blender also offers more opportunities because Blender’s overall design and functionality are aimed at an extremely general audience, making it practical and advantageous for various industries.

The User Interface of KeyShot is surprisingly easy to learn and use, even with its excellent performance and creative quality. KeyShot is entertaining and useful for specialists in the area thanks to its well-organized interface, which is topped with a variety of automated tools and procedures. 

Pricing & Licensing

KeyShot has a lot of products with different features so they have different costs. You can see each product’s price following:

It has always been free to download and use Blender software. With the Blender license, you can use the program for any kind of purpose including creating commercial and educational content.

Which software is better, Keyshot vs Blender? It will depend on your demand as a 3D modeler or animator. One of them has advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, Consider each of the features and start working on your projects.