Hi,

I am looking for render software (under $500) that works well with MOI. so far I have downloaded and play with Simlab Composer Pro and Thearender. Both program are easy to use.
Does anybody have experience with either of the them or other render application that you can share? I need the application for both product and architectural rendering.

I appreciate any response.

Thanks,

-sharif

I don't believe that you will find better than Thea Render :)
Less price yes :)
Free like Cycles inside Blender

Hi Sharif, I've heard from quite a few MoI users that use MoI in combination with Simlab Composer, so that would be a good choice. I've also heard of some people using Thearender as well so that's another good one to try out. So I think you're already going in a good direction.

There's also Keyshot which is great in the easy to use area but I think is outside your price limit.

There are a bunch of other rendering programs that do a whole bunch of stuff like rendering, modeling, painting, animation, physics simulations, etc... Like Modo, Maya, etc... these tend to be quite a bit more complex to learn though.

- Michael

Hi sharif, are you a student ? If so you can get many rendering and modelling packages at massive discounts and some may even be free. KeyShot as mentioned by Michael do a student version for less than $100 a year, do a search with your favourite search engine, there are many render engines to choose from these days GPU based ones if you have a powerful graphics card or CPU based if you have a mid to high range processor.

Martin
(TpwUK)

Hi Sharif,

Although I've not personally used it, FluidRay RT is available for about $350 US

http://www.fluidray.com/
http://www.fluidray.com/buy/

There's an offer of 15 day Trial with unlimited use too.

http://www.fluidray.com/try-now/

HTH, Colin

Hi Sharif,

I would recommend Octane Render (€ 299) http://home.otoy.com/

I export obj file (triangles only) with styles and then I replace the styles by materials in Octane, uv mapping from MOI works excellent in most cases.

Some example is here http://moi3d.com/gallery/viewitem.php?id=790

Mik

You can go the "free" route with Kerkythea, which is TheaRender's predecessor. http://www.kerkythea.net/cms/
No GPU support or any real developer support in the last few years, but the "Boost" version is 64 bit. http://www.kerkythea.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10661
The interface is no frills and it does a nice MLT (Mutton Lettuce and Tomato), clay rendering and whatnot.

For architecture maybe also free Sketchup and this one
more easy than Kerkythea : http://twilightrender.com/index.php/what-is-twilight/hobby-vs-pro
or this funny free one https://www.getvisualizer.com/ (only for Sketchup)

and this last free very cool one (only for Sketchup) just a little watermark in the right corner up page
Lumen RT VIZ for Sketchup http://www.lumenrt.com/store/ who is also ocean water wind terrain vegetation modeler !

For Sketchup LightUp is also cool but 294€ / 335$ https://www.light-up.co.uk

Hi All;

Thank you all for responding. I am a solo practicing architect. I already have The Autodesk Building Premium Suite on subscription which includes 3DS Max, Autocad, Showcase and Revit with its own rendering. Autodesk rendering programs are very complex and takes long time to learn. So I never use them.

For high quality rendering for projects usually I outsource it to outside rendering consultant. The new rendering that I am looking was for getting a quick and decent rendering both for architectural and product design. What I like about Simlab Composer and TheaRender that both can use CPU. Both program works well with MOI via .OBJ file format import. Simlab Composer has great integration with Rhino and Revit. I can link or import Rhino or Revit file into Simlab. After some test that I have done, I think I am leaning towards Simlab. The quality of rendering it might not be as good as others, but it is OK for my purpose. It is a great program with lots of features, easy to use and reasonably priced ($299).

Thanks again
-sharif

Another +1 for Thea (which just got a native Rhino plugin if you should ever go that route).
It is extremely flexible, has the best and easiest networkrendering on the planet (setup takes about 20 seconds and after that it just works), can use CPU and GPU (and both together), you can render biased and unbiased, it works very well with MoI exported objs, the community is as awesome as this one, the main dev is brilliant and they are very friendly when there should be an issue.
They don't lock you into a yearly maintenance either.
It is my favourite renderer for photorealistic work.
For other things I also enjoy using Lightwave 3D since it can do all kinds of stylized and NPR looks.
But you can't go wrong with Thea IMO.

Price is also right with Thea.

Cheers,

Tom

mmm.

Have you try Blender?
Dazstudio?

I have Cinema 4D Prime but doesn't have all the render setting like the broadcast or studio version.

I have Lightwave 3D but this one cost is higher of what you are looking for.

You could try Carrara 8.5 Pro from Daz too.

"Keyshot which is great in the easy to use area but I think is outside your price limit."

Can MOI export to Keyshot? I didn't see a .bip choice under export options. It would be super if it did, as I have Keyshot.

Bob

Hi Bob, there are a number of formats you can export from MoI that will import into KeyShot. In fact KS5 introduced 3DM support for MoI too and you can render MoI surfaces with no need for render meshes, just tell KeyShot to import NURBS data. Otherwise you can also use, OBJ FBX LWO STEP IGES 3DS (if you keep parts below 65536 polygons).

Martin
(TpwUK)

Hi Bob,

> Can MOI export to Keyshot? I didn't see a .bip choice under export options.
> It would be super if it did, as I have Keyshot.

The standard version of Keyshot supports numerous file formats that MoI exports. It's only a specially crippled version of Keyshot that's bundled with Alibre that is limited to only import .bip files, I guess to make it so it only works with Alibre and not other programs in general or something like that. The .bip format is an undocumented private format that's specific only to Keyshot and so isn't really feasible for MoI to export to bip itself.

- Michael

+1 Octane render
Great light, beautiful colors.

Blender Cycles, its free and gives great results.

Plenty of learning tutorials on Youtube

I am an architect as well, and I bought Octane as soon as it came out. I am very pleased with it now. They keep the software updated and have a lot of plans for the future. It's constantly improving.
You can achieve unbiased lighting with ease, which works fine for us who don't have time to spend in tweaking lots of parameters to get a good looking GI. Plus, you only need one powerful GPU instead of changing all the hardware to upgrade your PC.
Another great solution is Corona renderer.
M.

That's actually what I like with Thea: You can render on CPU and GPU at the same time with the Presto engine, so that neither sits idle. But it's especially cool with network rendering: When one client doesn't have enough GPU Ram or no powerful GPU at all, it automatically falls back on CPU (also quite efficiently so). And this also allows you to gradually invest in better GPUs whenever it suits you while Octane is a Yes/No solution.

And: Network render nodes are only 49.- Euro with Thea ;-)

There also is currently an introductory price for the Thea/Rhino Bundle including two network nodes for 320.- Euro
https://www.thearender.com/site/index.php/live-plugins/thea-for-rhino.html

All other engines are great as well of course, I just came to enjoy the flexibility of Thea for my line of work.
Whatever works best for you :-)

Cheers,

Tom

Thanks Michael. It looks like I do indeed have the, "specially crippled version," of Keyshot that came with Geomagic. Dang. And, here I have this nice Star Trek model nearing completion that I'll have printed up (possibly kitted up, too) that I'd love to render. Oh well, at least it came free.

Bob

Toolbag ?