Hi,

I've seen so many wonderful creations here and I always ask myself - what piece of intricate software is used to create it. Since I don't want to afford something like Keyshot, I wonder if there are alternatives to it. So far I've found appleseed studio which looks nice (they always look nice when one views the gallery)...
http://appleseedhq.net/features.html

But for a newbie it is pretty hard to operate and it is full of acronyms. It took me half an hour to get a basic model loaded and light up so I can at least see something... Is there anything more user friendly out there?

Many thanks,
Stefan