Links to resources for Keycap Design
My initial goal was to find out if keycap designers were using a template for all the nice GMK keysets that people render. I wanted to then use that template for my own WASD keycap design. I never did find that 'one template', but I did find a lot of interesting information. Hopefully the information I share here will save some others some time.
All of these resources should be open/free to use. Send a pull request if you think something should be added here.
One quick note. It became pretty clear that Dakota Felder - https://www.dakotafelder.com/ did a lot of the nice work below. Huge thanks to him for doing that.
Open Cherry Font - https://github.com/dakotafelder/open-cherry This is the font that people typically see on a GMK render. Note: it doesn't have the symbols for the modifiers (Shift, Tab, etc.)
If you need a WASD template for the vintage Cherry legends. That is available in this repo as vintage_cherry.pdf. I got this from WASD keyboards (thank you support person). You can easily import this into inkscape.
Open Gorton https://github.com/dakotafelder/open-gorton An open-source font based on Signature Plastics' Gorton Modified. Made for the keycap designer community.
https://www.dakotafelder.com/keycap-designer-resources This is a set of blender files that are a fantastic resource for doing a base kit render. He used to have a render in a board, but he took that down.
https://www.reddit.com/r/keycapdesigners/comments/dzg7rb/heres_a_2_minute_tutorial_on_how_to_render/ This is a nice short tutorial on how to use the dakota felder blender templates by Mr. Felder himself.
Here are some direct links to his videos:
https://www.reddit.com/r/keycapdesigners/comments/fwnyxy/looking_for_cherrygmk_models_with_hiragana_here/ Diehambre has posted blender and obj models.
https://github.com/hineybush/CherryMX These are not in blender, so the software to read these in is $$. A lot of people point at this for renders, so I link to it here. hineybush - https://github.com/hineybush/ - is pretty well known in the geekhack keyboard community
https://github.com/getclacking/ Jason has quite a few repos of nicely done WASD keyboard templates.
https://github.com/getclacking/aek-ii-keycap-project
https://github.com/getclacking/1971-wasd
https://github.com/Teggy/APL-PragmataPro-keyboard This is another nicely done template for those who like the language APL.
Signature Plastics reference colors: https://deskthority.net/wiki/Signature_Plastics_ABS_colours
GMK reference colors: https://deskthority.net/wiki/GMK_colours
Photo of GMK Keycaps with their color codes: https://matrixzj.github.io/docs/gmk-keycaps/ColorCodes/
WASD Keycaps reference colors: https://www.wasdkeyboards.com/designer-text-color
I have a photo of the WASD keycaps in this archive: https://github.com/drudru/keycap-design/blob/master/wasd-keycaps-colors.jpg
KeyV2: Parametric Mechanical Keycap Library by rsheldiii. These are OpenSCAD models generated by code. https://github.com/rsheldiii/KeyV2 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2783650
Here is the original reddit post announcing them. https://old.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyboards/comments/2gu236/i_made_a_cuztomizable_3d_printable_cherry_mx/
https://github.com/CQCumbers/kle_render This takes the json from the awesome http://www.keyboard-layout-editor.com/. It renders a very basic PNG, but it is open source, you may be able to coax a blender file out of it.
https://keycaprenders.com/ They have templates for keys and keys+keyboards. You pick the basic color scheme and then they email you the PNG of the render.