Hi as you said the main problem is thinking is a simple as see on videos that are very confusing, Blender is a complex software, and maybe you don't know the basics for such type of application, is a professional software, and it is fully of features not only the rendering that is a final step for any works, the complexity is in various knowledge and as for others modern path tracer they follow the same rules, Renderman used in movies for most of the VFX is an hardest software even than Blender. To have a nice render you need to take the time and don't give up, many tutorials was made from newbie that don't really understand what is the right way to teach. maybe if you have time start reading some book or get a look on online manual. There is many steps before you know how use it, such as for material physics, like the glass that react in different manner if the have the thickness or not, for metals and many of those now are more simpler with a new node implemented in various rendering engines, the Principled shader developed by Pixar and used in Blender and others path tracer such as AMD ProRender Vray etc. for any materials there is many parameter to tweaking, but anyway if you have time is free great application, and make awesome render.

Below the link to the manual for technical information
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/index.html

and here a video series for First Steps - Blender 2.80 Fundamentals
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MF1qEhBSfq4

A great community where people share and helps
https://blenderartists.org/

Blender 2.8 Eevee : render 3 second

a short video

@pafurijaz
-Blender is a complex software-

I would use the term: uncomfortable (scomodo-poco pratico)
Complex is the opposite of simple
I do an operation in Cinema4D...same operation in Blender is more uncomfortable
I open Modo or Lightwave and i see a clear UI...open Blender previous versions...a bad UI
Is something wrong in me? I'm not enough skilled..smart..clever ?

What we are doing here?Why we are here and not on Rhino forum?
It's because we use Moi.It's simpler than Rhino.What does it mean?
Do an operation in Moi is more comfortable than do it in Rhino
It doesn't mean that who use Moi is less clever and smart than who use Rhino
It means that Moi is built in a better way than Rhino
It means that Michael (one)is more clever and smart than Mc Neel programmers (many)

...programmers...

It not only happens in 3D software
I'm mechanic mantainance and building in woodworking machines for chairs
Use Moi as CAD,but started 3D in ACad 2000..prompt line command,orient UCS icon for extrude.. :)
I have two tenoning machines to restore, from different brands..they are competitors
If i turn on the display in one, i see a clear,logical interface
not the same in the other..do the same thing need to open more windows,nested menus etc.
I say to myself:Mauro you are not an idiot if you don't understand how it works...that programmer is idiot !

Blender attract so many people,most of all young,because it's free.
I can't pay forced updates or year subsctiptions if i want my external renderer still works into my package.
So i did this jump into Blender...it's free,so no complains..but is uncomfortable :)

Hey Tim..you are ok..just take your time and things will be better :)

M

A brief thing, without any controversy.
I have seen this continuous comparison for years and all to say that one is more suitable than others software and is true but saying is horrible or other like is an insult to the all people working on these software maybe is more adapt I don't like UI is comprehensible , as you can read from my comments I do not urge or try to convince anyone nobody to use Blender but I would avoid giving certain judgments on something just because I am unable to use.
This also happens with moi3d where some people think they are doing things magically without knowing about NURBS.
And you also seem to be saying things without knowing the story, since Rhino was programmed by Michael.

I used and bought rhino 2.0 and is the same with more feature. I have upgrade to the version 3.0 and left for others Mechanical CAD, SolidEdge, for professional works, Now I totally changed my job.
And I use Blender since 2000 and I made many thing that are impossible for people even right now.

The History of Rhino

May 1992 - First meeting with AG. Applied Geometry (AG) came to us for assistance in integrating their AGLib, NURBs geometry library, in AutoCAD. AG customers included Alias Research, Spatial, Honda, and Tecnomatix.
Jul 1992 - First prototype in AutoCAD after about three days of work
Nov 1992 - McNeel/AG agreement to develop AccuModel, NURBs modeling for AutoCAD. McNeel would do the marketing and AG would do all the development. McNeel would provide AutoCAD development support as needed.
Nov 1992 - Michael Gibson hired as an intern. He brought Sculptura, a mesh modeler that he had done as a class project.
Mar 1993 - Sculptura released
Mar 1993 - McNeel takes over as the lead on the AccuModel development
Jul 1993 - First prototype of Sculptura 2 ready for NURBs
Nov 1993 - Sculptura 2 nicknamed Rhinoceros
Jan 1994 - New McNeel/AG agreement. McNeel licensed AGLib from AG and AG was to provide the needed AGLib enhancements and maintenance.
Apr 1994 - Rhino beta released on the Graphic Alternative BBS. This was our first version of a public beta program.
May 1994 - Dr Dale Lear hired from AG. We had found that we needed in-house geometry expertise to develop the functionality and usability needed by our clients.
May 1994 - Alias Research agrees to purchase AG. Alias was AG's largest customer and they felt that one of their advantages was the geometry technology.
May 1994 - First commercial products completed using AccuModel. Ed Monk & Son Naval Architect released an 82-foot sports fishing boat.
Jul 1994 - Geometry development begins in earnest. Alias didn't seem to be interested in the geometry library business.
Aug 1994 - Sculptura renamed Rhinoceros after it was determined that we would not be able to resolve the trademark problems with AccuModel
Aug 1994 - Private showing of Rhino at SIGGRAPH
Nov 1994 - Sale of AG to Alias final
Mar 1995 - McNeel provides Alias with first installment of geometry technology
Jun 1995 - Alias purchased by Silicon Graphics
Jun 1995 - McNeel receives the last update of AGLib
May 1997 - Last build of AccuModel for AutoCAD. As the Rhino product progressed we decided that it would be better to focus on the Windows version.
Sep 1997 - 50,000 beta sites and growing fast without any promotional effort on our part
Jul 1998 - 100,000 beta sites
Jul 1998 - Announced October release at SIGGRAPH
Oct 1998 - Rhino version 1.0 released
Dec 1998 - First 5,000 shipped
Jan 1999 - Japanese version released
Jan 1999 - First public beta of 1.1 released
Jan 1999 - First European reseller meeting in Barcelona
Mar 1999 - First third-party book on Rhino published
May 1999 - Korean version released
Aug 2000 - First public beta of Rhino 2.0 and Flamingo released
Aug 2001 - Rhino 2.0 shipped

Full link here https://wiki.mcneel.com/rhino/rhinohistory

Below NURBS CARs made in Blender in the years between 2001-2003 when we was a few people, now Blender is used in movie for VFX, games and much more and by many studios around the world and is supported from big company.
The problem isn't the software but some times the lazy people.
and here wash i doing now a big assembly of Yacht this model is underdevelopment with over 1000 parts. And Blender is my CAD that I use for developing surfaces to export in others CAD with the help of my own workflow.

Blender is a question of feeling I try every year since 10 years but no it's not for me! :)

@pafurijaz
And you also seem to be saying things without knowing the story, since Rhino was programmed by Michael.

I use Moi since 2007,then purchased license in 2008
I did all sort of objects with Moi.During these years,i also did many posts on the forum showing my workflow
I read the forum everyday..i know exactly who did Rhino :)
It doesn't mean nothing..i'm a end user..Moi it's more comfortable than Rhino..that's a fact
You know what Michael often says? Moi is addicted...
Caro Fabrizio,your presence here means that i'm right
You too find Moi more comfortable than your beloved softwares
If not,you shoud be there,not here.
Being you an old Blender user you should understand better,newbies facing for the first time there
Much more if you know all critics against Blender during the years
Have respect for the programmers behind Blender's development it's up to you
If i'm a customer that i have to pay for a software i say: sorry..i can find better for that price
Blender is free ;)
Supposing Alias is free...a network surface with 4 sides continuity G2 each other..
Half car modelers jump into it..don't care about learning curve :)

I think you are an engineer,following your serious approach
Be more "elastic" or -indulgente-(you are Italian like me) with people start 3D modeling
We are not at Toyota,we don't use Catia or Alias
We try to make a car's fender,or Tim's vehicle in Moi
Often many people here is the very first time that they model something

M

I agree I'm often very rigid, and even I know many users like Pilou, that never had get feeling well with Blender, but I help any user for every uses, when I can. Moi is great Nurbs application and for me you can make any kind of model, what other do with advanced surfaces modeller, we need only some working on it.

Anyway we can return on the topic of Ultra-efficient vehicle and it's rendering problem.

The most render engines follow the same rules PBR book (Physically Based Rendering: From Theory to Implementation) http://www.pbr-book.org/
and this rules is valid in the materials creation and lighting. Knowing those basics many seem the same. But the wall is for mostly users is shading and lighting where a new approach is rises out, but many guys are sharing a lot a free resources.
Below a link helpful for basic knowledge. The most easiest is Keyshot, and maybe C4D, but those are very expansive for only the rendering task. the others on market simpler is Maxwellrender, Indigo or Thea Render, but today are comings out a real-time engines and maybe is time to start learning those newest. starting with Twinmotion or others like Unreal a game engine that allow a rendering with modern GPU. and Many newer was software related

https://maxwellrender.com/

https://www.thearender.com/

https://indigorenderer.com/

https://home.otoy.com/ a bit hard but very powerful and limited to Nvidia GPUs

And the awesome but hard to use a standalone https://luxcorerender.org/

These are what I know I hope any can add more to this short list.

The more impressive for its adaptation to Blender was Chipp Walters! :)
In no time he his becoming a true Guru of it! Astonished!

@Mauro, @pafurijaz - I am impressed that you've been able to have a discussion on potentially sensitive issues without it devolving into a flame war!

Between Italians no less... ;)

- Michael

I did not want to open a can of worms. I didn't want to get into the pros and cons of Blender. This forum is not about Blender. But the question of rendering models that we make in MOI came up and it's unavoidable, since MOI doesn't do rendering and that is often what modelers want as an end result. I tried to say that the problems that I've had with Blender are "personal"; I have to feel that way because I've seen too much great work done with Blender (the short video, 'Spring', is beautiful!). I don't think my difficulties are all related to the UI, but even the Blender faithful have been critical of the old UI, and this is why it has been completely redone in V-2.8. I looked at the older Blender and wouldn't go there because the UI was a mess; or I should say, too confusing to me. As soon as 2.8 was released, I got it and started watching tutorials. Anyone who rejected the old Blender should take a look at the new one. And there is another option. Apparently the in-group still thinks that the UI is not sufficiently user friendly, because they have just issued BlenderForArtists, which is (I think) an effort to attract those of us who were not born on Mars. Returning to my "personal" problems, I can only restate that I don't understand why the rendering is unacceptable. I selected the colors, made the paint shine, selected 'glass' for the canopy, added a 'sun' and a ground plane. The result wasn't even a bad joke. I added three more 'area lights', to bring out the dark (totally black) spots. Then I had unwanted light reflections in the body. I added other planes with patterns so that there would be something to reflect in the shiny paint. I had been proceeding on the assumption that after I had selected colors, materials, lights, ground and background that I would have something that only required fine tuning. Instead, I apparently have to start all over; but I can only do again what I did the first time, as I don't know what I did wrong. I'm only reiterating here for those newbies who are just getting into modeling. To me, the modeling is easy (with MOI). I don't think I'm alone in saying that it gets more difficult from there.

Hi Tim

So,if all problems are related to render your vehicle,you should post your questions not here,in a modeling forum
my suggestion is always model in real scale from the beginning
when you export to a render platform,you need to have camera,distance from object all in coherent scale
As you can see it's just 128 millimeters,check in your Blender scene if all is in scale
It's a toy model or a real vehicle?
Dimensions in millimeters



I suggest you to get a solid without mirroring
Avoid patches like these




I did something like that in the past









M

Somptuous Abarth!

This is my quick try













It's more or less one month i'm learning Blender

Leave apart discussions,you can get all this with default VX Library included,choose your hdri and it's done (for free :) ) !

My opinion is that model is too flat and smooth..need details that add relief to the object ;)

As Pafurjiaz said:don't give up,stay focused on target,it doesn't exist a magic button

Hold on !

M

Else you have also this free one! (more classic) :) (Epic Games / Unreal)
(you have also free Twin Motion from Epic Games in absolute easy way : a fabulous one + cool interface and not headaches! )
(don't open the Youtube site of this guy! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHx1jeKRMi_wDAwvvhaIDYA/videos :)



and even specialised :)

Thank you Mauro! You may have found the problem. First, I did design everything to proper dimensions -- but in inches, not millimetres! You Europeans won't like this, but the fact is that sometimes the English system makes more sense than the French system. The first things that I had to draw were the wheels/tires. With a few exceptions (like the old 400-mm size, that my Citroen had, and works out to about 15.75-inches diameter) all tires are in inches. I chose 13-inches for the tires. I then had to decide to go with inches or centimetres, and I went with the former. What isn't much appreciated is that the crazy English system was based on Human Scale, and if you are designing something for people, it makes more sense. When I design an engine, it's always in millimetres. Now, to the problem of rendering. When I brought the model into Blender, it was Huge. I thought, okay, I'll just scale it down. I did 'Select All' and scaled it. Then I noticed that the camera was very hard to find because it got scaled down also! I thought that 'Select All' would mean only the model, not things like lights and camera. So I selected the camera and scaled it up. Things seemed okay at that stage so I went on to selecting colors, materials, etc. But you have me wondering. Maybe the rendering looks so bad because -- relative to what goes on with ray tracing -- I've reduced the model down to thumb-nail size! Now you guys haven't had the problem, but you started with the model and when you translated and brought it into Blender you probably didn't go through all that scaling nonsense. You see, you guys know what you are doing and I'm stumbling around in the dark. But now I at least have a theory as to why my rendering looks bad, and I can go back and see what I have to do to avoid scaling. But if this theory pans out, I have to wonder what sort of scale is "best". If the scale changes the look of the model, that is a question, and one that I never thought of. In reality, you have to change the scale by a huge factor before light behaves differently. But ray tracing is not reality. Okay, thanks to Mauro, I have things to try.

I do lurk here still-- mainly because I really like Michael and his program, though I seldom use it these days.

Here are a few quick renders of your "dymaxion" vehicle done in Blender. Note none of these 1920 x 1080 renders took longer than 3 seconds EEVEE (that includes volumetric effects, area lights with soft shadows, HDRI maps and DOF!)

Took about an hour to set it up-- much of it adding decals and modifiers to surfaces.

Click on image to see full scale (1080p)

And for what's it's worth, I pretty much used all my EEVEE Materials System to quickly add materials. KIT OPS to add decals (the MOI 3D logo I did awhile back) and HDRI Haven for the HDRI. Judicious use of volumetric fog along with area and point lights combined with camera depth of field to create the atmospheric effects.

The new Blender is much easier than older versions, but yes, it is more difficult to learn it all. Consider though:

MoI3D and Rhino focus only on modeling.

Blender does:

- Modeling including non-destructive parametric: See NITROX3D
- UV Unwrapping
- Material creation
- Texture painting
- Sculpting (like Zbrush)
- Animation
- Real time rendering EEVEE and Path Tracing CYCLES
- Motion design
- Fluid simulation
- Particle effects
- Cloth effects
- Soft body effects
- Full compositor
- Full video editor
- (and I'm sure I'm missing something)

So, of course that's going to be harder. And for the Cinema 4D guys that think Blender is hard-- I think Cinema 4D is hard LOL!

Not to mention they literally update it every day-- and it's free-- and it's the most supported platform in the world with the most users-- many of them pros.

Lastly, check this guy out-- he's insane (and a huge Blender user).
His YT videos are fun to watch and take only a minute or two:

This one is great: https://youtu.be/icqLFiwpNlM

But the most amazing one is this one:
https://youtu.be/qG31WSioSxk

and that's because it was all rendered in EEVEE-- even the people. Literally all in realtime. Just amazing.
Check out what I mean. Watch as the girl is composited realtime in the 3D preview:

https://youtu.be/lY8Ol2n4o4A

Just awesome stuff.

Chipp the last Blenderian Ambassador! :)

I am fan of Lazzy tutorials for lazzy people! :) (for the pleasure of the eyes! ;)