so take a look of the new one! :) (free in 1024 *1024)

https://boxshot.com/owlet/

works like a charm :)


In their gallery

Blender works nicely. And it's free. And it's been around for a long time. The new 2.8 version is so much easier to use than previous versions.

Hi ...
First, I do not consider that I am an accomplished renderer. I have Blender, Octane and SimLab Composer but little real expertise with any. I just tried the free/lite version of Owlet and I am impressed. It is intuitive and fast. I got a reasonably good, illustrated render of a small cabin with about 15 materials in about five minutes without reading any tutorial material. I just opened it, loaded an obj file and began changing reflectivity, colors, shades of materials, etc. It only took seconds to respond to change and to produce a pretty good and clean image. The other tools are very good in my limited estimation but I am tempted to buy this one for quick illustrations of architectural models.
cheers,
eric

I have been working with Owlet and SimLab Composer today ... I had some problems with Owlet making holes in large solids (like the ground plane) and when all the materials were applied the render time is pretty slow. If I had to make an evaluation today ... I'd give Owlet a 5.5 out of 10 and SimLab an 8.

It is probably not a fair comparison. I was using the free version of Owlet and the Pro Version of SimLab.

cheers,
eric

Thanks for the info!

I tried Owlet, it is nice, but the renders seem super slow. However, it loaded the object file without a hitch and applying materials was a cinch. So that was really great!

Right now I am downloading blender 2.8 beta to see if the object import keeps all the MoI info. Is there a printable (like PDF etc) Blender 2.8 manual anyone knows about? I am the old school, "love to have a paper manual" type of guy... ;-)

I also talked to Lubos and he will try to get version .6 of ArmorPaint to work with MoI models, that would be great for texturing and painting MoI models and extremely affordable.

I really appreciate all of you guys taking the time to help me out, this is a great community!

I also tried Virtual Spaced UV and that is awesome for unfolding a model, but too pricey for me. One real killer program I found for that is BFF (still not finished, but man!), it unfolds mathematically perfect.

But it seems it isn't even necessary with Owlet...

Thanks to all of you for taking time out to suggest and educate, much, much appreciated!

BFF is this one ? https://github.com/GeometryCollective/boundary-first-flattening

Yup, that's the one.