
KeyShot offers a range of lighting options to help you create realistic and dramatic renderings. The software allows you to go beyond the default HDRI lighting and use physical lights for more accurate and realistic results. You can control the colour, intensity, and angle of light sources, as well as use light materials to create focused beams of light. To render electricity in KeyShot, you can utilise these lighting features and adjust them to create the desired effect.
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What You'll Learn

Lighting options: HDRIs and physical lights
KeyShot offers two ways to light your scene: HDRIs and physical lights. The former is the default method, but the latter can be used to light your scene more accurately and realistically.
HDRIs
HDRIs, or High Dynamic Range Images, are images that contain a high dynamic range of luminance and colour information. In KeyShot, HDRIs are used to light a scene by casting light from every pixel of the HDRI image onto the scene, with each pixel being the same distance from the centre of the scene. This results in unrealistic shadows and highlights as it is not how light and shadows behave in the real world. While you can control the size and softness of light sources within an HDRI, you cannot control the distance of the light source from an object.
Physical Lights
Physical lights in KeyShot are materials that are applied to an object or piece of geometry in your scene. There are five types of physical lights in KeyShot: Emissive Lights, Area Lights, Spotlights, IES Profiles, and Luminaires. Physical lights offer more realistic shadows and highlights as they behave like real-world photo studio lights, taking into account the falloff of light and shadows over distance. When using physical lights, it is important to use models that are built to scale and to refrain from scaling models after importing them into KeyShot. Additionally, the further a physical light is from its target, the darker the target will be.
Combining HDRIs and Physical Lights
While physical lights offer more realistic lighting, combining them with HDRIs can also produce good results. This can be done by using an HDRI as the primary light source and adding physical lights to enhance specific areas of the scene.
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Light sources: colour and placement
When it comes to lighting in KeyShot, there are two types of light sources: HDRIs (light from images) and physical lights (light from materials). The default method is HDRIs, but you can also use physical lights or a combination of both.
Colour
The colour of light in KeyShot can be adjusted to match the light source. White light, for instance, contains every wavelength of electromagnetic radiation, but most light sources emit a slightly coloured light. You can set the colour of the light in the software and place a stencil texture in front of the light to control its shape and colour. For accurate lighting colours, use the Kelvin scale to select accurate lighting temperatures.
Placement
In KeyShot, physical lights can be applied to parts as materials. Any geometry can be turned into a light source by importing new geometry, using existing geometry, or adding a primitive. The Light Manager gives you an overview of all the light materials in the scene and can be accessed via the ribbon, the main menu, or the hotkey Shift L.
When using physical lights, it's important to consider the scene and model units. It's best to use models that are built to scale and refrain from scaling models after importing them into KeyShot. Improper units can cause lights to appear too bright or not bright enough. Additionally, the distance of the physical light from its target will affect the brightness of the target, with further distance resulting in a darker target.
The size of the light source also matters. Small light sources create dimmer light, while larger ones emit brighter light due to the larger light-emitting surface area. The softness of shadows is also influenced by the size of the light source, with large sources producing soft shadows and small sources resulting in harder shadows with sharp edges.
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Light intensity: Watts and Lumens
When creating images or animations in KeyShot, it is important to understand the basics of lighting to improve rendering realism. One of the ways to set up lighting in KeyShot is by using physical lights, which can be combined with HDRIs (lighting from images). When adjusting the brightness of lights in KeyShot, it is important to understand the difference between watts and lumens.
Watts are a measure of radiant flux or energy consumption, indicating how much electricity a lightbulb consumes in an hour. For example, a 60-watt incandescent lightbulb consumes 60 watts of energy per hour, resulting in a brightness of about 1600 lumens. In contrast, lumens measure the total amount of visible light or brightness emitted by a light source, such as a lamp or LED. A higher number of lumens indicates a brighter light, while fewer lumens result in a dimmer light.
When shopping for light bulbs, it is recommended to compare lumens rather than watts to ensure you achieve the desired level of brightness. For instance, to replace a 100-watt incandescent bulb, look for an energy-saving bulb that provides around 1600 lumens. However, it is important to note that the brightness of a light bulb is influenced not only by its lumen output but also by the surface area it illuminates. This relationship between lumens and surface area is expressed as lux, or lumens per square meter.
In the context of lighting installations, lumens refer to the total light output, while watts represent the power consumed by the light fitting. A larger area will require a higher lumen output to achieve the same lux level, typically accomplished by increasing the number of light fixtures. Additionally, the efficiency of the light source affects the relationship between lumens and watts. For example, an LED light bulb emitting 1600 lumens consumes about 18 watts per hour due to its higher efficiency compared to an incandescent bulb.
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Light material types: five options
KeyShot offers two ways to light your scene: HDRIs, which are the default method, and physical lights. You can also use a combination of both. There are five light material types in KeyShot, each with distinct properties and behaviours, providing a wide array of uses for lighting your scene. Here are five light material types and their properties:
- Area Lights: This light type emits light from each triangle on a surface and provides a wide range of light dispersion, similar to a floodlight. You can choose the colour of the light and place a texture in front of the light source to colour and mask the emitted light. The power of the light can be controlled in Watt, Lumen, or Lux, with Lumen or Lux recommended for the best results. Area lights are ideal for surface geometry without thickness, and you can choose whether the light emits from the front, back, or both sides of the geometry.
- Emissive Lights: Emissive lights are used for light-emitting materials such as bioluminescent materials, illuminated displays, and small electronic devices like phones, tablets, and computers. They emit light from each triangle on a surface and are similar to Area Light Diffuse.
- Point Lights: Point lights emit light from a single point in the centre of the geometry it's applied to, making them very efficient.
- Spotlights: With spotlights, you can set the colour of the light and place a stencil texture in front of the light to control its shape and colour. The strength of the light can be adjusted with the power configurator, measured in Lumen or Watt.
- IES Lights: IES lights have a specific brightness setting, and you can increase or decrease the brightness beyond the actual in-real-life brightness by adjusting the intensity value.
By understanding these light material types and their unique properties, you can choose the best lighting options for your KeyShot projects.
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Light animation: editing and movement
KeyShot Animation allows you to animate models, environments, materials and/or cameras. You can translate a part across the scene by right-clicking on the part in the Scene Tree, selecting Animation > Translation, and tweaking the animation settings. Animations in KeyShot are represented by rectangular nodes in the animation timeline. Each node has a start time, an end time, and a duration. You can move them around, scale them, stack them, or line them up in sequence to achieve different effects.
To create animated lighting in KeyShot, you can use an Emissive material applied to an object that moves across the scene, or you can use an animation applied to the model and the camera. You can also use physical lights to light more accurately and realistically. When using physical lights, it is important to consider scene and model units. It is best to use models that are built to scale and to refrain from scaling models after importing into KeyShot. The further a physical light is from its target, the darker the target will be. Lux, or Lumens per square meter, is a measure of light intensity that takes into account surface area.
When adjusting the brightness of lights in KeyShot, it is important to understand the difference between Watts and Lumens. Watts measure radiant flux, or how much electricity a light bulb consumes in an hour, while Lumens measure the amount of light emitted. Using the same Lumen value across different-sized objects will result in varying brightness appearances.
To add a physical light, simply drag and drop a light material from the KeyShot Library to a piece of geometry in your scene. There are five light material types in KeyShot, each with different uses. You can set the colour of the light and place a stencil texture in front of the light to control the shape and colour.
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Frequently asked questions
KeyShot allows you to use HDRIs, physical lights, or a combination of both. To create a light source, you can turn any piece of geometry into a local light source by applying a light material to it. There are four Light Source Material Types: Array of Light, Point Light, IES Profile, and Animation. You can control the intensity of the light using Watts or Lumens and set the colour of the light.
To add a light source, you can either drag and drop a light material from the KeyShot Library to a piece of geometry in your scene or apply a light material preset by going to the Library window > Materials tab > Light folder.
To move a light source, right-click on the part assigned as a light and select "Move Model", or select the light source in the Project window > Scene tab and then select "Move Tool" from the Position tab.












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