Power Surfacing Viz
CAD import, IntegrityWare tessellation, bundled KeyShot rendering, and mesh export for Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, and Maya.
In Beta, Releasing Very Soon
CAD visualization, translation, and rendering prep
Power Surfacing Viz is a standalone CAD visualization and rendering-prep system with KeyShot bundled. Import engineering models, clean up assemblies, convert CAD data to meshes with IntegrityWare’s world-class tessellation engine, and create product visuals without needing a full CAD seat — and without buying a separate KeyShot license. Prepare and export meshes for other visualization packages such as Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, and Maya.
Use Power Surfacing Viz for CAD visualization, CAD translation, and rendering preparation. Power Surfacing Studio is great for modeling geometry, including CAD modeling, sketching, and Sub-D. Power Surfacing RE Studio is great for reverse engineering. Power Surfacing Viz excels at visualizing and rendering geometry.
With Power Surfacing Viz, import engineering models, clean them up, tessellate, and create product visuals without paying for or tying up a full modeling license. A full CAD seat is not required.
Power Surfacing Viz is based on the popular Power Translators product, which imported STEP and SOLIDWORKS data into 3ds Max for high-quality rendering. The added benefit is that Power Surfacing Viz is standalone and does not require a separate license of any other third-party product.
Interactive Visualization
Visualize the tessellation and adjust the tessellation settings to get the appropriate mesh density for a rendering application or an interactive visualization application. Mesh density can be inspected and adjusted for rendering or real-time display. Adjustments to the mesh include maximum angle, maximum chord height, and maximum edge length (see image 2 below). Tessellation tolerances can be adjusted for multiple objects, or for all objects in an assembly, and those updates are applied in parallel.
Multiple Rendering Options
Power Surfacing VIZ packages three rendering options: LuxCore, KeyShot, and Cycles. Each brings its own strengths, giving you a choice of approaches for product imagery, lighting, materials, and animation.
Use different HDRI (high dynamic range image) environments to simulate real-world lighting, from a bright outdoor scene to a softly lit interior or a studio setup. The environment supplies surrounding light that shapes shadows, highlights, and reflections. Comparing the same model under several HDRI environments helps you evaluate how its materials, colors, and finishes will look in different settings.
LuxCore
Physically based lighting and reflections
LuxCore simulates how light travels through a scene to create photographic results. It is a strong choice for images where reflections, indirect lighting, and the relationship between a product and its environment are central to the presentation.
KeyShot
Product materials and finishes
The bundled version of KeyShot is great for high-quality still-image generation. Realistic materials and environment lighting help show metals, plastics, and coatings in polished product visuals. To create animations in KeyShot, you will need to purchase a full version of KeyShot.
Cycles
Versatile rendering for stills and animation
Cycles combines physically based rendering with a flexible approach to materials and lighting. Use it for still images or animated product presentations, such as this projector turntable, to show a design from multiple angles and reveal how its surfaces respond as the view changes.
Animation
Rendered animations extend a product visual into motion. They can walk someone through how a product is assembled, show details a still image leaves hidden, or present the product as it is used.
Power Surfacing VIZ includes an easy-to-use keyframe animation system. Set keyframes to define how objects move over time, adjust their timing in the animation editing window, and use Play to preview the result.
Animation options include:
- Explode: move components apart or bring them together to explain assembly order, part relationships, and how a product is built.
- Rotate: turn individual parts or an entire assembly to show a design from multiple angles, create a turntable, or demonstrate moving components.
- Transparency: change the transparency of housings and other parts over time to reveal internal components while retaining the surrounding product context.
- Cutting geometry: animate cutting geometry through a model to reveal sections, internal shapes, and details that would otherwise be hidden.
Object paths and corresponding keyframes
View object paths directly in the viewport alongside the exploded assembly. The matching colors connect each object's path to its keyframes in the animation editing window, making it easier to follow the motion and coordinate the sequence.
This rendered animation of a shaver reveals its interior workings. Animated transparency makes parts see-through so you can see inside the product.
Precise Geometry Modification
Prepare CAD geometry for clear product visuals with precise edits directly in Power Surfacing VIZ. Cut text into a part, imprint edges and split faces, or section an assembly to reveal internal details.
Cutting text
Use text geometry to cut lettering into a part. Add names, labels, or branding as geometric details that appear in your rendered images and animations.
Imprinting edges and splitting faces
Project a sketch onto an existing surface to imprint edges and split it into separate faces. Use the resulting regions to define details and apply different colors or materials, such as the logo panel shown here.
Sectioning and cutaway views
Section an assembly to expose internal components and show how they fit together. Contrasting colors on the cut faces make the section easier to read and help explain the product's construction.
AI Driven (MCP Bridge)
Connect a compatible AI assistant to Power Surfacing VIZ through its MCP (Model Context Protocol) Bridge. Describe what you want in plain language, and the assistant can use VIZ tools to inspect your assembly, prepare a scene, create animations, and start rendering jobs.
AI automation with hands-on control
Power Surfacing VIZ combines AI automation with hands-on visual control. Let AI set up an animation, then adjust component movement, timing, camera views, or materials directly in VIZ. Use the Play button or render preview to see the effect of your changes immediately, and switch between AI commands and manual adjustments as you refine the result.
On complex assemblies, AI often needs your knowledge of how the product fits together. Guide which parts move first and the directions they should travel, then fine-tune the motion to avoid intersections. This combination of automation, manual control, and immediate visual feedback makes it easier to build a clear, accurate assembly animation.
Manual adjustments to the camera definition are equally important. Refine the camera position, viewing direction, zoom, and motion to frame the subject, reveal the right details, and get just the right image or animation. Preview each change as you refine the shot.
- Prepare your scene. Import STEP models, inspect assembly components, and assign materials. Adjust cameras, HDRI environments, and lighting to develop the presentation you want.
- Create and refine animations. Build turntables and exploded views, adjust keyframes and timing, and animate transparency or camera movement. Refine the result through follow-up requests.
- Preview and render. Create animation previews, set resolution and frame rate, and render still images or animation batches. Animation jobs can use your configured remote Render Workers.
- Review and iterate. Inspect viewport captures and completed renders, check job progress, and request changes to materials, viewpoints, or motion as you develop the final result.
Created entirely through Codex
This arbor press animation was created with the six Codex commands below through the MCP Bridge, without manually operating Power Surfacing VIZ. The requests cover assembly motion, camera movement, materials, test renders, and the final animation on a remote render machine.
The commands used in Codex
- Let's import arbor_press.step and animate it exploding in a reasonable order without intersecting other objects in the assembly. Then once it is disassembled rotate the camera 90 degrees then reassemble it in the same order.
- Let's change it so that the ram doesn't go up so high and so that the pinion shaft slides off one end of the lever arm so that the exploded animation doesn't take up as much screen space so we can zoom in more.
- Now start with a view where the assembly fills the screen. Then zoom out and start the disassembly. Then after the reassembly zoom back in at that other view.
- Make the Arbor_frame car paint. Make the table plate solid glass. Make the pinion shaft and the ram metal very smooth so that it looks like chrome. Make the face plate and all of the other smaller pieces metal. Make the lever arm red car paint and the pinion shaft metal very smooth so that it looks like chrome.
- Go ahead and use QHD and Ultra quality. Render the test frames first so we can check the glass and chrome before rendering the whole animation.
- Let's render the animation now on the remote render machine.
Enable the bridge in Platform Settings > MCP and connect your compatible AI client. Turn on Allow MCP model edits when you want the assistant to make changes or start rendering jobs.
View-Based Tessellation
Use View-Based Tessellation to refine geometry around hard edges and fillet edges for the view you want to render. Finer tessellation helps preserve edge definition, smooth curved outlines, and reduce visible facets in close-up images.
Refinement is especially useful where small radii and curved transitions catch light. Giving these areas more geometric detail helps highlights flow across fillets and keeps product silhouettes clean at the scale shown in the image.
- Refine hard-edge outlines for cleaner, more accurate product profiles.
- Add detail along fillet edges for smoother curves and more continuous highlights.
- Improve close-up and presentation renders by reducing visible tessellation artifacts.
Rendering for Technical Illustration
Turn CAD models into clear technical illustrations by rendering edges, silhouettes, and vertices alongside shaded surfaces. Edge outlines define part boundaries and curved profiles, while visible vertex markers highlight corners and connections.
Use these illustrations in product documentation, assembly guides, training materials, and design presentations. Combine linework with color, shading, or transparency to explain the shape of a part and how an assembly fits together.
Silhouettes and surface curves
Silhouette outlines make the overall shape easy to read. Add surface curves to show how a form bends and to give an illustration more geometric detail.
Edge Rendering
Use colored edges to reveal the shape and internal structure of an assembly while keeping selected components shaded. View the complete arbor press or expand the close-up to examine its gears, rack, and fasteners.
Highlight edges and vertices
Contrasting edge colors and vertex markers draw attention to the structure of a model. The close-up makes it easy to see where edges meet around fasteners, holes, and curved transitions.
Illustrate Assembly Components
Keep component boundaries readable in a shaded product illustration, or combine edges with transparent materials to reveal internal relationships. These arbor press examples show several ways to present the same assembly.
Micro Filleting
Turn unrealistically sharp CAD edges into believable manufactured edges—without changing the CAD model.
Micro Filleting adds the subtle edge rounding that makes CAD models look real. Power Surfacing Viz automatically enhances hard edges with microscopic render geometry and optimized normals, creating natural specular highlights without modifying the original CAD model or requiring thousands of manually modeled fillets.
Micro Filleting in Power Surfacing Viz adds realistic edge softness to CAD models without requiring tiny fillets to be modeled in the original geometry.
CAD models often contain mathematically sharp edges that are convenient for design and manufacturing, but those edges can look unnatural in a high-quality render. In the real world, even seemingly sharp manufactured parts have small edge breaks that catch light and create subtle highlights.
Remote rendering for faster animation batches
The free Power Surfacing Render Worker is highly optimized for rendering animations. Render images and animation batches on this computer or a different one. Send jobs from VIZ and let your render machines process the queue while you continue working.
Parallel frames and GPU geometry caching
Unmodified geometry is cached on the GPU and shared between frames, reducing repeated geometry uploads. Depending on the GPU load for each frame and available memory, two or more frames can use the GPU at the same time. Parallel processing helps keep the GPU busy throughout an animation batch. Per-frame rendering is 5 to 10 times faster than rendering individual frames one at a time.
Add more render machines
Install the Render Worker on multiple Windows computers to process queued work across your machines. Connect VIZ and the workers to a shared queue folder that each computer can read and write. No Render Worker license key is required.
Recommended rendering hardware
The Render Worker can run on smaller machines. For high-performance GPU rendering, we strongly recommend an NVIDIA GeForce RTX or equivalent compatible GPU with at least 8 GB of dedicated GPU memory (VRAM).
For large assemblies or fine tessellation settings, choose more GPU memory. Higher polygon counts, textures, and simultaneous renders all increase memory demand. Check the graphics card's VRAM separately from the computer's system RAM.
GeForce RTX 5060 Ti
8 GB GPU memory
Around $1,500
Complete desktop PC
A starting point for smaller scenes and animation batches.
GeForce RTX 5070
12 GB GPU memory
Around $2,300
Complete desktop PC
More memory for larger assemblies and finer tessellation.
GeForce RTX 5080
16 GB GPU memory
Around $3,200
Complete desktop PC
Additional GPU performance and memory for demanding scenes.
Approximate USD prices for complete desktop computers, based on Costco listings reviewed October 23, 2026. Configurations, promotions, prices, and availability vary; check the current listing before purchasing.
Bundled KeyShot for high-quality images
Power Surfacing Viz includes a bundled version of KeyShot for high-quality still-image generation, with no separate KeyShot license required for those images. To create animations in KeyShot, you will need to purchase a full version of KeyShot. Power Surfacing Studio and Power Surfacing RE Studio also include these bundled KeyShot image-rendering capabilities.
Where Viz sits in the Power Surfacing family
The standalone products form a stair-step. Power Surfacing Studio and Power Surfacing RE Studio each include the full functionality of Power Surfacing Viz plus the KeyShot render engine.
1
Power Surfacing Viz
CAD import/export, cleanup, lightweight edits, bundled KeyShot, and mesh export for Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, and Maya
2
Power Surfacing Studio
Full Viz functionality plus CAD, sketching, Sub-D modeling, and the KeyShot render engine
3
Power Surfacing RE Studio
Full Viz and Studio functionality plus reverse engineering and the KeyShot render engine
What VIZ Includes
AI assistance with manual control
Automate through the MCP Bridge, make adjustments directly in VIZ, and preview the results immediately.
Keyframe animation and camera control
Animate objects and cameras with an easy-to-use keyframe system. View object paths, adjust timing, and preview changes with Play.
Precise geometry modification
Cut text into parts, imprint edges and split faces, and create sectioned or colored cutaway views.
Multiple rendering engines
Choose LuxCore, Cycles, or bundled KeyShot for still images. KeyShot animation requires a full KeyShot license.
Remote and batch rendering
Render animations across multiple machines, with parallel frame processing and shared GPU geometry caching.
Technical illustration
Combine shaded surfaces, silhouettes, colored edges, and vertex markers to explain assembly components.
Micro Filleting
Add realistic edge highlights without modifying the original CAD geometry.
Interactive and View-Based Tessellation
Control mesh density and refine curved outlines and fillet edges for close-up renders.
Assembly preparation
Organize components, control visibility, assign materials, and adjust positions.
CAD import and visualization export
Bring engineering models into VIZ and export meshes for other visualization tools.
Precise measurement
Inspect dimensions and relationships using precise NURBS geometry.
A typical Viz workflow
- 1
Import the engineering model
Bring in STEP, SOLIDWORKS, OBJ, STL, or 3MF data.
- 2
Organize the assembly
Use the assembly browser to find parts, hide what you do not need, and group materials.
- 3
Tessellate CAD to meshes
IntegrityWare’s world-class tessellation engine converts CAD surfaces into meshes. C# multi-threading keeps it very fast on large assemblies and large complex parts. Produce low-poly models for gaming and virtual reality, or high-density meshes for visualization and 3D printing.
- 4
Assign materials and color
Clean up colors and apply materials so the model is ready for product imagery.
- 5
Position or Animate
Position components, create exploded views, rotate parts or assemblies, animate transparency, or move cutting geometry to reveal sections and internal details.
- 6
Render or export
Create high-quality still images with bundled KeyShot, or prepare and export meshes to OBJ, STL, or glTF for Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, Maya, and other visualization packages. KeyShot animation requires purchasing a full version of KeyShot.
Supported input and output formats
Input formats
- STEP
- OBJ
- STL
- 3MF
- SOLIDWORKS files (open or receive by export, depending on licensing)
Output formats
- KeyShot
- OBJ — Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, Maya, gaming, VR, and other visualization packages
- STL — 3D printing and mesh exchange
- glTF
Pricing
Buy VizPerpetual License
$1,495$995
One-time purchase, yours forever
Network License
$2,495$1,995
Floating license shared across your team
Annual Maintenance
$295/year
Updates and support for perpetual licenses
Annual Subscription
$795/year
Includes updates and support
Network Subscription
$995/year
Floating license shared across your team — includes updates and support
Introductory perpetual pricing available through June 2027. KeyShot is bundled — no extra KeyShot license purchase is required. Power Surfacing Viz is a visualization and translation product — not a replacement for Power Surfacing Studio or RE Studio.
Power Surfacing Viz FAQ
Is Power Surfacing Viz a CAD modeler?
No. It is a CAD visualization, translation, and rendering-prep product. Use Power Surfacing Studio for standalone CAD, sketching, and Sub-D modeling, and Power Surfacing RE Studio for reverse engineering and scan-to-CAD.
Do I need a full CAD seat to use Viz?
No. Viz is a standalone Windows application. A full CAD modeling seat is not required to import engineering models, clean them up, and create product visuals.
How does Viz convert CAD data to meshes?
Viz uses IntegrityWare’s world-class tessellation engine to convert CAD surfaces into meshes. The engine leverages C# multi-threading so tessellation stays very fast on large assemblies and large complex parts. It can produce both low-poly models for gaming and virtual reality and high-density meshes for visualization and 3D printing. You control tessellation so imported CAD data is ready for KeyShot and for export to packages such as Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, and Maya.
Can Viz produce low-poly and high-density meshes?
Yes. IntegrityWare’s tessellation engine can produce low-poly models for gaming and virtual reality, and high-density meshes for visualization and 3D printing. You set tessellation density for the job.
Does Viz include KeyShot? Do I need a separate KeyShot license?
KeyShot is bundled with Power Surfacing Viz for high-quality still-image generation. You do not need a separate KeyShot license for those images. To create animations in KeyShot, you will need to purchase a full version of KeyShot. Power Surfacing Studio and Power Surfacing RE Studio also include the bundled KeyShot image-rendering capabilities.
Can Viz export meshes for Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, or Maya?
Yes. Prepare visualization-quality meshes in Viz and export OBJ, STL, or glTF for other visualization packages such as Blender, Modo, 3ds Max, and Maya. You can also render in Viz with bundled KeyShot.
How is this related to Power Translators?
Power Surfacing Viz is based on the popular Power Translators product, which imported STEP and SOLIDWORKS data into 3ds Max for high-quality rendering. Power Surfacing Viz is standalone and does not require a separate license of any other third-party product.
When should I choose Studio or RE Studio instead?
Choose Studio when you need sketch-based CAD, feature modeling, or full Sub-D creation. Choose RE Studio when you need reverse engineering, scan-to-CAD, surface fitting, or deviation analysis. Both Studio and RE Studio include the full functionality of Viz plus the KeyShot render engine.
Do Studio and RE Studio include Viz and KeyShot?
Yes. Power Surfacing Studio and Power Surfacing RE Studio each include the full functionality of Power Surfacing Viz and bundled KeyShot for high-quality still images. A separate Viz license is not required. KeyShot animation requires purchasing a full version of KeyShot.
Is a free trial available?
Yes. A free trial of Power Surfacing Viz is available from the trial downloads page.
Start using Viz
Download a free trial of Power Surfacing Viz. KeyShot is bundled — no extra KeyShot license required.