Hi argo, nothing really springs immediately to mind as far as any shift in the landscape for free/cheap + standalone renderer + easy to use...

That combination just does not seem to get a whole lot of new stuff happening in it, there are various new renderers popping up all the time but they seem to be more often set up as plug-ins to other systems rather than stand alone.

So I think probably the same advice from 2 years ago still applies now, but maybe some others will have some info for you.

- Michael