Mike,

I tried Kerky before and even recently but since it uses Moi style as material definition, this would mean I would have to basically create a different style for almost every parts I've created ie. close to 300 and maybe I would even need to break some apart to have separate piece on the rendering. If I have to UV map each part for example, this would take for ever.

I'm looking at Blender Cycle at this time but it to needs a Moi style for each group of pieces and I would also need to break some pieces apart as with Kerky but the rendering in Cycles can be almost live so I find it easy to tweak until I like what I see. I'd be happy I think with no material at all from Moi but with named objects at least and handle the material assignment the way I want in Blender without having to bother myself with this in Moi because I use Moi styles much more as layers then materials. I think I could use the obj format without material for this and I already know this approach is useless with Kerky, it needs somekind of material groups from the starts, unless I missed something of course.

If I'm not mistaking, 3D Max is somewhere around 2~3K$ and VRay is another 1K$ on top and this is out of the question for me, maybe in an other life...

Thanks,
Felix