Author Topic: kbrenders - Affordable 3D rendering services for keycap designers  (Read 25579 times)

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Offline CQ_Cumbers

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kbrenders - Affordable 3D rendering services for keycap designers
« on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 07:48:38 »
kbrenders
Affordable 3D rendering services for keycap designers

I am now offering a service to 3D render your keyboard-layout-editor keycap set designs within 2 hours - check it out at kbrenders.com. I currently charge $5 for every render, so if it fits your use case it can be significantly faster and cheaper than many comparable offerings.

Currently, it supports six keyboard layouts - Triangle (Full Size), Mech27 (TKL), Espectro (96%), M65 (65%), Klippe (60%), and Mech Mini 2 (40%) - and three keycap profiles - SA, DSA, and GMK. Only legends that are visible in kle-render will show. Final output is photorealistic, unlike kle-render, because kbrenders actually ray traces every request in blender instead of compositing 2D images. Try it out and tell me what you think! I'd especially appreciate any feedback on what new features would be most important for keycap set designers.

You can see sample renders as well as read more about how kbrenders works at kbrenders.com




« Last Edit: Tue, 20 July 2021, 09:56:49 by CQ_Cumbers »

Offline MikeTheTiger

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #1 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 07:59:31 »
You need to render that LEGO keyset. LOL. Looks cool!!

Offline Oblotzky

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #2 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 08:19:43 »
neat  :thumb:

Offline Coreda

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #3 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 08:52:12 »
Renders look pretty swish. Nice one.

Offline xondat

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #4 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 08:53:03 »
Looks sweet. That TKL model needs some work though ;)

Offline Traveler

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #5 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 12:21:05 »
This looks nice! Do you have any interest in turning it into an executable or releasing the source so people can run it on their local machines? That would help with server costs not getting out of hand. But if your goal is to keep to yourself in case you decide to turn it into a paid service later on that's totally understandable.

Offline Kafka

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #6 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 12:35:26 »
GMK legends need to be a bit bigger I think

Offline CQ_Cumbers

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #7 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 13:49:33 »
Looks sweet. That TKL model needs some work though ;)

I think the TEK80 model is pretty accurate to the actual board - you can find photos of it online and it really does look like that.

This looks nice! Do you have any interest in turning it into an executable or releasing the source so people can run it on their local machines? That would help with server costs not getting out of hand. But if your goal is to keep to yourself in case you decide to turn it into a paid service later on that's totally understandable.

With regards to open sourcing, I do plan on charging maybe $10 per render once I have all the bugs ironed out and more options available. Also, I have it built out as a collection of autoscaling cloud microservices - getting it to run on one computer locally would require a lot of rewriting.

GMK legends need to be a bit bigger I think

I'll update the template to increase the GMK legend sizes. kbrenders and kle-render.herokuapp.com use the same code for generating legends, so you can preview how the legends look using kle-render before requesting something with kbrenders.

Offline Eturior

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #8 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 14:23:22 »
You should try the smooth shading option in Blender. I don't know how good it would look with the geometry of the keycaps, but those flat faces could be fixed  ;)

Offline donutcat

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #9 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 15:45:47 »
Looks really good for something that's going to be freely and easily available for potential set designers to utilize. I'm looking forward to seeing more of these renders around than just KLE mockups in the future.

Offline EightDiagram

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #10 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 16:09:32 »
kbrenders
an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers

I just built a new cloud service that will 3D render your keyboard-layout-editor keycap set designs within 24 hours - check it out at kbrenders.com

Dude. Thank you.

Offline ye_cole

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #11 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 19:12:30 »
what the actual ****. i love you.

Offline ye_cole

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #12 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 19:22:27 »
Do you have plans to make it so that it can just give us a blender file so you don't have to waste server resources to render?

Perhaps at a lower price in the future compared to just having the server render it.

Offline ye_cole

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #13 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 19:23:35 »
Also, your GMK legends are out of line. They should be center left for mods.

Offline AuthenticDanger

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #14 on: Tue, 21 November 2017, 20:28:31 »
DSA is coming, right? I'd certainly be interested in using this for an upcoming group buy if I could get DSA renders.
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Offline ReadmeDotTxt

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #15 on: Wed, 22 November 2017, 00:04:58 »
This I like. Like, a lot.

Offline muni_chang

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #16 on: Sat, 25 November 2017, 00:26:30 »
appreciate :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-* :-*
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Offline rrrsss

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #17 on: Sat, 25 November 2017, 15:45:08 »
Do you have plans to make it so that it can just give us a blender file so you don't have to waste server resources to render?

Perhaps at a lower price in the future compared to just having the server render it.

agreed! this would help you alleviate the cost!

Offline iHateKnives

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #18 on: Mon, 27 November 2017, 05:12:02 »
It's displaying 'application error' atm :'(
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Offline CandyKeys

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #19 on: Mon, 27 November 2017, 05:26:04 »
This is sick.

Still room for improvement but very good!
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Offline vinzlr

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #20 on: Mon, 27 November 2017, 13:21:12 »
Do you have plans to make it so that it can just give us a blender file so you don't have to waste server resources to render?

Perhaps at a lower price in the future compared to just having the server render it.

I would love this!

Offline tristinDLC

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #21 on: Tue, 28 November 2017, 04:27:32 »
Great project!


What are the colors used on the last green/yellow board? I'd love to be able to replicate that myself.

Offline CQ_Cumbers

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #22 on: Sat, 02 December 2017, 08:03:36 »
Hey, I didn't realize that I ran out of hosting hours last month, so kbrenders was down for the past few days. It is back online now, and I've added support for DSA keycaps as well as additional templates to the site. I'm also planning on adding 40% and 96% keyboard models to the site sometime in the next few weeks.

Offline MMKB

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #23 on: Sat, 02 December 2017, 23:29:47 »
This is to me like the wind tunnel to Wright Brothers.
        

Offline CQ_Cumbers

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #24 on: Sat, 09 December 2017, 19:02:17 »
I can't afford the costs of running kbrenders anymore, and have no idea how to properly charge people money for it, so kbrenders is shutting down forever. I wish I could have kept it up for longer but I hope you found it useful. In the meantime kle-render.herokuapp.com will stay up until the end of this month before shutting down permanently as well. If you need renders for your sets in the future, I can vouch for the quality of thesiscamper's work.

Offline Traveler

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #25 on: Sat, 09 December 2017, 20:02:41 »
I can't afford the costs of running kbrenders anymore, and have no idea how to properly charge people money for it, so kbrenders is shutting down forever. I wish I could have kept it up for longer but I hope you found it useful. In the meantime kle-render.herokuapp.com will stay up until the end of this month before shutting down permanently as well. If you need renders for your sets in the future, I can vouch for the quality of thesiscamper's work.

That sucks, but I understand. Thanks for providing while it lasted! Definitely looked like a good project and hopefully it can be revived some time in the future.

Offline THRILLHOIAF

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #26 on: Sat, 09 December 2017, 20:08:19 »
I will miss KLE-Render like crazy,

Its too bad KLE and KB couldnt just have a paypal donation button where you could put in any any amount from  $1 or more for each render

Let your users choose the price!


Thanks anyways CQ_Cumbers! SA By the Sea wouldn't be where it is today if it werent for these services!

Offline luismonterieart

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #27 on: Sun, 10 December 2017, 04:56:20 »
Very cool project dude  :thumb:
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Offline mudcakehoney

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #28 on: Sun, 10 December 2017, 05:23:42 »
Oh I’m so sorry to hear that. I second the donation button.

Offline maylily

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #29 on: Sun, 10 December 2017, 06:26:56 »
I can't afford the costs of running kbrenders anymore, and have no idea how to properly charge people money for it, so kbrenders is shutting down forever. I wish I could have kept it up for longer but I hope you found it useful. In the meantime kle-render.herokuapp.com will stay up until the end of this month before shutting down permanently as well. If you need renders for your sets in the future, I can vouch for the quality of thesiscamper's work.
Do you have 3D model of 2 sets of SA and GMK full?
I have a need to buy two sets: 3

Offline KaosJ

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #30 on: Sun, 10 December 2017, 06:29:16 »
Sad  :(   

Would renders on requests be an option? 

I think you can charge X or get tips from people for that 




Offline aspenc4

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #31 on: Mon, 11 December 2017, 08:01:49 »
That’s really unfortunate, you have s great thing here. :(


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Offline lordgiblite

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #32 on: Mon, 11 December 2017, 09:29:40 »
I am sorry you couldn't keep it going CQ_Cumbers  :'(

Thank you for the amazing service and for communicating this unfortunate news.

Sad  :(   

Would renders on requests be an option? 

I think you can charge X or get tips from people for that 

Can I second this? I would love to support you if I can, I really wanted to tip you from KB already ;)



Offline ashwinv11

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #33 on: Mon, 11 December 2017, 11:44:33 »
Seriously. Big thanks CQ_Cumbers, your service really pushed me to finish designing my set! Cheers and thanks for all the fish

Offline ye_cole

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #34 on: Sat, 16 December 2017, 17:10:26 »
F. :(

Offline ideus

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #35 on: Sat, 16 December 2017, 17:57:48 »
It says application error.

Offline KeycapKid

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #36 on: Sun, 17 December 2017, 02:04:56 »
Also getting "application error". Renders look great though. Hope it's back up soon. Good work.

Offline zekkin

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #37 on: Sun, 17 December 2017, 06:18:20 »
It was taken down due to server costs.

Offline TerryMathews

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #38 on: Mon, 18 December 2017, 21:41:35 »
I can't afford the costs of running kbrenders anymore, and have no idea how to properly charge people money for it, so kbrenders is shutting down forever. I wish I could have kept it up for longer but I hope you found it useful. In the meantime kle-render.herokuapp.com will stay up until the end of this month before shutting down permanently as well. If you need renders for your sets in the future, I can vouch for the quality of thesiscamper's work.

Dude, it's not any of my concern but what stack were you running kbrenders on, and could you possibly re-engineer it to run locally? It seems to me, you're taking an HTTP POST containing some options and a JSON, then returning the results via e-mail. There's nothing there that requires cloud computing.

You created a pretty great tool, it'd be a shame to see it die like this.

Offline gutsack

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #39 on: Tue, 19 December 2017, 14:53:10 »
Also curious about how to make this feasible for running locally, and up for helping transition it to some open source repo if you're up for it. I think this sort of thing could be really helpful for the community!

Offline ashwinv11

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #40 on: Wed, 20 December 2017, 00:51:04 »
Also curious about how to make this feasible for running locally, and up for helping transition it to some open source repo if you're up for it. I think this sort of thing could be really helpful for the community!

Also interested! Open sourcing also comes with the added benefit of more features via community contributions

Offline spacewolf

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #41 on: Thu, 28 December 2017, 14:54:24 »
I can't afford the costs of running kbrenders anymore, and have no idea how to properly charge people money for it, so kbrenders is shutting down forever. I wish I could have kept it up for longer but I hope you found it useful. In the meantime kle-render.herokuapp.com will stay up until the end of this month before shutting down permanently as well. If you need renders for your sets in the future, I can vouch for the quality of thesiscamper's work.

I cant imagine people wouldnt pay to keep this going, patreon style... If you arent interested in keeping it going, I may be. The sourcecode for kle-render is available but kbrenders is not... what can we do to make that happen? I dont want to simply set up a patreon page and host it myself if that's something youd want to do yourself.

I noticed you havent replied here in a while, so I dont know what to expect, but I know the community doesnt want to lose kle-renders

Thanks!

What the world needs is hosting that other people can pay for.

Offline dinojaemin

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #42 on: Wed, 10 January 2018, 10:59:42 »
I think paypal donation or charging for the service is reasonable. We are (unless I am) ready to afford for kle-render and kbrenders. Your tools are allowing people to design their keycaps easly. I saw a lot of people using kle-render in the massdrop keycaps contest in whiich the dsa 2077or something have won. I HOPE them to COME BACK ASAP. Though I respect your intent.

Offline CQ_Cumbers

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #43 on: Thu, 01 February 2018, 06:47:48 »
It appears I was wrong about shutting down forever - after a significant redesign kbrenders is now back online!

I've added two new keyboard layouts - the Mech Mini 2 (40%) and Espectro (96%) - as well as DSA support. Also, while I offered kbrenders for free before, this was not sustainable, and I'm now charging a $10 fee per render. I hope this is still accessible for everyone who wants to use kbrenders.

Offline MikeTheTiger

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Re: kbrenders - automated 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #44 on: Thu, 01 February 2018, 09:05:52 »
It appears I was wrong about shutting down forever - after a significant redesign kbrenders is now back online!

I've added two new keyboard layouts - the Mech Mini 2 (40%) and Espectro (96%) - as well as DSA support. Also, while I offered kbrenders for free before, this was not sustainable, and I'm now charging a $10 fee per render. I hope this is still accessible for everyone who wants to use kbrenders.

That's great to hear. Now let's get back to putting out Classic Space... ;)

Offline mudcakehoney

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Re: kbrenders - automated 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #45 on: Thu, 01 February 2018, 13:53:57 »
It appears I was wrong about shutting down forever - after a significant redesign kbrenders is now back online!

I've added two new keyboard layouts - the Mech Mini 2 (40%) and Espectro (96%) - as well as DSA support. Also, while I offered kbrenders for free before, this was not sustainable, and I'm now charging a $10 fee per render. I hope this is still accessible for everyone who wants to use kbrenders.
That is great to hear! When uploading a layout to you do you need it to match the output? ie if I were to send you a TKL would you be able to make a 65% out of that it does it need to be 65% to begin with?

Offline CQ_Cumbers

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Re: kbrenders - automated 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #46 on: Thu, 01 February 2018, 14:17:25 »
It appears I was wrong about shutting down forever - after a significant redesign kbrenders is now back online!

I've added two new keyboard layouts - the Mech Mini 2 (40%) and Espectro (96%) - as well as DSA support. Also, while I offered kbrenders for free before, this was not sustainable, and I'm now charging a $10 fee per render. I hope this is still accessible for everyone who wants to use kbrenders.
That is great to hear! When uploading a layout to you do you need it to match the output? ie if I were to send you a TKL would you be able to make a 65% out of that it does it need to be 65% to begin with?

Yes, it needs to match the output. There should be a link underneath the KLE JSON field to a template that will provide the most accurate legends and key sizes for the keyboard you selected. If you submit a different layout to the layout of the keyboard it may work, but is unlikely to produce the desired results.

Offline Data

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #47 on: Thu, 01 February 2018, 14:25:45 »
It appears I was wrong about shutting down forever - after a significant redesign kbrenders is now back online!

I've added two new keyboard layouts - the Mech Mini 2 (40%) and Espectro (96%) - as well as DSA support. Also, while I offered kbrenders for free before, this was not sustainable, and I'm now charging a $10 fee per render. I hope this is still accessible for everyone who wants to use kbrenders.

I understand the need to charge for this service (and agree unconditionally) but the option to get a free thumbnail preview, so you can get at least a general impression of what you're buying, would be awesome.

Offline CQ_Cumbers

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #48 on: Thu, 01 February 2018, 15:20:27 »
It appears I was wrong about shutting down forever - after a significant redesign kbrenders is now back online!

I've added two new keyboard layouts - the Mech Mini 2 (40%) and Espectro (96%) - as well as DSA support. Also, while I offered kbrenders for free before, this was not sustainable, and I'm now charging a $10 fee per render. I hope this is still accessible for everyone who wants to use kbrenders.

I understand the need to charge for this service (and agree unconditionally) but the option to get a free thumbnail preview, so you can get at least a general impression of what you're buying, would be awesome.

The renders are ray traced on a separate machine that I don't keep running all the time, so even small previews would require waiting a day and cost me basically as much as a full resolution image. However, you can preview how legends would look using kle-render.herokuapp.com (it uses some of the same code) although it isn't photorealistic. I will be adding some DSA sample renders to the website very soon as well.

Offline lordgiblite

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Re: kbrenders.com - an automatic 3D rendering service for keycap designers
« Reply #49 on: Fri, 02 February 2018, 23:47:18 »
It appears I was wrong about shutting down forever - after a significant redesign kbrenders is now back online!

I've added two new keyboard layouts - the Mech Mini 2 (40%) and Espectro (96%) - as well as DSA support. Also, while I offered kbrenders for free before, this was not sustainable, and I'm now charging a $10 fee per render. I hope this is still accessible for everyone who wants to use kbrenders.

I understand the need to charge for this service (and agree unconditionally) but the option to get a free thumbnail preview, so you can get at least a general impression of what you're buying, would be awesome.

The renders are ray traced on a separate machine that I don't keep running all the time, so even small previews would require waiting a day and cost me basically as much as a full resolution image. However, you can preview how legends would look using kle-render.herokuapp.com (it uses some of the same code) although it isn't photorealistic. I will be adding some DSA sample renders to the website very soon as well.

Thanks for the tid bit of information on the legends, I know I would be heartbroken to find out I got awesome renders with bad legends. I am so glad this is back up and running though, you are the best.