Keyshot

KeyShot is one of the leading rendering tools in the jewelry industry — fast, photorealistic, with a deep material library and studio lighting environments. If it is where your renders happen, you lose nothing by designing in RhinoArtisan: the integration is a live link, not an export.

The workflow it replaces is the painful one: export, import, reassign materials, rebuild lighting, notice a design flaw, start over. With Live Linking the KeyShot scene stays tied to the Rhino document — you keep the modelling speed of RhinoArtisan and the render quality of KeyShot in the same loop.

Installing the plugin

The integration uses KeyShot’s free plugin for Rhino, installed from the package manager in one minute:

1. Run the PackageManager command and type keyshot in the search field.

2. Select KeyShot Studio and click Install:

3. A new window asks you to confirm — click Install and let it download.

Once installed, three buttons appear in the Rendering tab of the RhinoArtisan ribbon.

The three buttons

Render — start the live link

Sends the model to KeyShot and opens it there, live-linked: the KeyShot scene remembers it came from this Rhino document. Set up your materials, lighting and camera in KeyShot as usual — that setup is what the link protects from now on.

Update — push a design change

The heart of the workflow. Changed the shank, moved a stone, resized the piece? Click Update and the geometry refreshes inside the open KeyShot scene — keeping the materials, lighting and camera you set up. No re-import, no reassigning, no starting over.

Export — package for later

Writes the model as a KeyShot package on disk, without opening KeyShot. Use it when the rendering happens somewhere else — another machine, another person, a render specialist who takes it from there.

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The loop in practice

1. Model the piece in RhinoArtisan.
2. Render — the piece opens in KeyShot; dress and light it there.
3. Render, look, and spot what the design needs.
4. Fix it in RhinoArtisan — with the parametric tools, so a change is a parameter, not a rebuild.
5. Update — the KeyShot scene refreshes, everything else intact.
6. Repeat until the image and the piece are both right.