Hi Axel, SimLab composer might be a good fit, you should give it a try:
http://www.simlab-soft.com/3d-products/simlab-composer-main.aspx

- Michael

Here is a list of rendering engines.
It's a mix of free and not free.
http://www.pointzero.nl/renderers/

there are lots to look over.

Val

For me the more funny and easy is Lumion http://lumion3d.com/free/ but in free :) Max (1280 x 720p) (animation or still images)
and a very little logo watermarked

because Pro version is something like 1500 to 3000 $ !

it has a crazzy easy terrain Modeler, ocean, skies... and accept any sort of file! ;)

Reminds me of Vue Render, with all the foliage.

Every rendering program out there has a great 'demo' video that make them look very powerful.
What they don't come out and say is that they were using a render-farm to produce the results. ;-)
So much for the student or hobby artist.

I recall an intriguing V-Ray tutorial one time where the final render screen had [dozens] of active render cursors moving around the screen at once, implying many CPU's at work [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ]...

Wow.

<< What they don't come out and say is that they were using a render-farm to produce the results. ;-)

It's not the case of Lumion ;)
No need of a render farm ;)

Just a little config musculated :)

Farm by Gilson Antunes & Music ;)
12 / 15 millions polygons
40.000 trees.

12 gigas ram - GTX 580-3Gb
3 days rendering for 8.5 minutes movie
Terrain 7.4 km x14 km
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX8xj12d-UQ

There are some fast render programs out there if you have a fairly good PC -

Octane is affordable and pretty fast if you have a good GPU card. My jewelry renders take about 3 minutes with Octane.

KeyShot is very fast on a modern PC, even better on 6 cores, but outside the budget of most student / hobby artists. My jewelry renders take about 1 minute with KeyShot.

When I purchased Hypershot (the forerunner of KeyShot) in 2008, it was priced the same as MoI. Now it's 5 times that price (granted it has added a lot of features over time).

Ed

You can try Daz 3D with Bryce, it is free.

http://www.daz3d.com/

>...good GPU card....

That's right! With an SLI motherboard and four high-powered video cards linked in, a rendering program that knows how to use GPU's would fly!

Man! Am I wasting my good time... I need to look into GPU-based rendering. ;-)

Mike,

When picking a render program, I'd look at the total time involved in the workflow, not just the render time.

For example, Octane with a good GPU card is fast, but it has a very long learning curve. Lots of controls to noodle with to tweak your final result. IMHO - a long set-up time.

KeyShot is both fast to set up, and fast to render. But at a higher start up cost.

Maxwell, IMHO is somewhere between the two above.

So I would decide where you see yourself in 1, 3 or 5 years. My guess is, since you've mastered MoI, you'll be into 3D modeling professionally soon.

And if that's the case, you may be money ahead in the long run to put your learning curve into a package that will allow you to under-bid your competition.

That may mean investing in a more expensive package at the front end to make more in the long run.

Also, decide what type of rendering you'll most likely concentrate on. Some professionals specialize in just one area: architecture, cars, medical equipment, consumer products, packaging, jewelry, advertisement, etc. Look at the gallery's for the various render programs and you can pretty well determine which specialty groups favor which program.

Ed

I'd say go for Maxwell because even if it's slow you can:

- Have access to a ton of presets (materials)
- Can quickly make physically accurate materials (plastics with real SSS)
- Get perfect lighthing and render settings out of the box (no need to configure things like in Vray)
- You can render your picture for 30min then stop the render and resume the render at any other time

For me all the time you loose in rendering, you gain it back in tweaking your scene and creating your materials

With Rebusfarm I rendered A3 sized images at 300dpi for around 15$ per image with gems and gold materials
(see http://shapenoid.com/Golden-Dreams )

It would cost a lot less for plastics and full HD images

Future will be Gpu-based renderers,or hybrid both Cpu+Gpu
Gpu renderers means also video drivers updated,maybe conflicts or crashes and so...(you know..videocards and drivers are "mine-fields" in every Pc )
If you choose Gpu computation is better to have two videocards:one basic and cheap to navigate,second just for computation (Nvidia Tesla like high-end)

Else for 0 $
your have Blender
with Internal Renderer
Cycles (like Octane)
or a ton of free renderers that you can manage from it!

Hi,

THEARENDER !

www.thearender.com

By

+1 for TheaRender :)

Top renderings ! ;)

> My guess is, since you've mastered MoI, you'll be into 3D modeling professionally soon.

Thanks Ed!
I feel good wisdom in your admonition.


Adamio.. Wow, nice examples!



...Does anyone know if Thea Render work with the GPU yet?

Thanks for all the replies.

What I need to render usually are small plastic housewares.
I have tested Octane and works very well. There are some fireflies but maybe is a matter of illumination adjustment. MOI .obj files work very well as far as I have tested and the price is really good. There is also a very nice turn table animation feature. On the other hand you cannot cast shadows on HDR environments.
Thearender works also very well. The price is a lot higher than Octane but still a lot cheaper than Keyshot. Thea has shadow cast materials so you can use them with HDR environments. Thea can do animations also.
Is hard to choose between Octane and Thearender.

Have any one try Arion render?

Axel

I just bought Arion for a discounted price as a Fryrender customer
Arion use all GPU and CPU's of your hardware (hybrid)
It deliver unbiased results or,if you want,you can save rendering-time switching to -draft-mode( a faster solution close to unbiased)
I use it preparing my scene in C4D R10.5 with my Fryrender plug-in to export the scene in that format then open it in Arion,so i can't say how it works importing directly Obj files
you can choose what video card will work for computation and how many cores of Cpu will work too,leaving some free hardware's power to modify your scene if you want
If you think to do an heavy-use of it you must have two videocards,like i told in my previous thread(an high number of CUDA cores and at least 1Gb video memory)
If you are a Max or Xsi user you also have LIVE plug-ins and animation
...sadly Randomcontrol have decided to "kill" all others export plug-ins(C4D-SKP-MODO-RHINO-MAYA)..and Fryrender too !
anyway i'm an- unbiased rendering- supporter,so my suggestion is choose one of them

Hello,

I have used Thea to see how clear PMMA parts would look (under 10mm in size) prior to production. Taking the parameters from material data sheets, the renders were very accurate when compared to actual parts.

It's probably got something to do with the particular rendering engine being "unbiased", but I'm unsure myself.

I notice that if I give Metropolis Light Transport mode (TR2 in Thea) enough passes in Keryky, even the most tiny detail will be captured, but at the expense of time and the graininess factor. Also the number of polygons given to the smaller details will affect reflection detail as well.
More polys kill render time though.

I know some modes I've tried will make cleaner broad surfaces with little noise but have issues with tinier details.
Some render engines are better with rendering globally illuminated objects, and some modes are better with caustics and indoor light elements.