You have pretty good renders engines inside Blender who are entierely free! Blender too!
The only cost is the learning curve who is not so evident for my old brain! :)




So I prefere Fusion 360 (free for enthusiast,hobbyst, student, even StartUp ! http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/try-buy
who has a render like a sort of an easy Keyshot for mecanical volumes or other crazzy forms! Life is too short! :)
And works very fine with Moi :)

FYI, you can create soft box HDRIs in KeyShot.

You can also create planes in KeyShot and map them with a gradient transparency then set them to area lights.

In fact you can do use gradient transparent falloffs for light boxes in lots of the renderers around, including realtime ones like Unreal 4.

Very smart elegance! ;)

Michael,

I was looking at the SimLab software. Is the basic hobbyist package good for use with MoI or is a more advanced level required?

I have gone through the same process of looking for rendering software that will accept non-mesh style formats like STP. I don't like the hassle of exporting to a different format and uploading to the cloud for file storage, but Fusion 360 can be acquired for free if a user earns less that $100k using it commercially. It has a decent enough render engine and a user can get something right out of the box, so to speak.

Here are some models I rendered with Fusion 360: http://www.textualcreations.ca/Flash_Gallery_Fusion/Fusion_Gallery.html
Not many but I don't have near enough time to play and experiment.

I believe I learned about the existence of Fusion 360 right here in the MoI forum.

I have been looking at SimLab but I think my trial is going to run out before I have enough time to 'render' an opinion.:-)

Hi Timouthy, I'd think the basic hobbyist package would be fine if you just need to make renderings.

But I guess it depends on what you need to get done, if you need to make long animations for example then that would change what edition you'd need.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,

One of the best things amongst others for this software is your direct and continuing involvement.

please, don't offer me Keyshot. I don't have money for Keyshot, Keyshot is too expensive for me, I don't have a job to earn with Keyshot, so, please, don't offer me Keyshot.

I hope it is clear now.

Not "offering" you KeyShot-- just correcting the perception you can't do soft lightbox lighting effects with it.

If I were you, I'd look at Marmoset and collect some standard HDRIs which already have the soft lighting you want. Also, because it's PBR shading, I suspect it would be simple to create a soft lightbox object(s) which you could easily drag around. Just create a plane and either give it a diffuse soft map or make it white and add a soft transparency map and set the material to emissive and voilà, you have your soft lightbox.

Keyshot HD won't create, edit and place. you can use presets only and this is completely useless. Keyshot PRO has all needed features, but the price is too high for me and I wrote about this

Hello glmr,

In Thea it's called a projector light, specify the soft shadow amount to get your "falloff panel" as you call it.

An animation I made with Simlab a few years back.... Ran into a deadline and only went half way. Finished it out with just the text... lol


Mag Lev Dog's Aliens Invade! on Vimeo.

Cool video Clip!

Je cherche un renderer capable de rendre en wireframe et en nurbs ( donc qui ne convertit pas en triangle comme Ks )

Est ce que ça existe ?

merci

Hi Dzeko, you might try saving to PDF, AI, or DXF formats, those will generate a 2D drawing using edges and silhouettes of the NURBS model.

For rendering programs the standard way for renderers to work is to convert surfaces into triangles and then render the triangles. With a renderer like that you might be able to get a better looking wireframe though by exporting out from MoI using N-gons instead of triangles which will preserve more of the original edge structure of your object, and also if you export with "Weld vertices along edges" turned off some renderers have a "toon" mode which can put outlines on the open edges which will correspond to the original edges in your NURBS model so that's another possibility.

- Michael

Salut
Si KS c'est keyshot, tu peux importer directement un fichier 3dm en Nurbs.
Ensuite tu choisi Matériaux > Toon
un visuel en pièce jointe

KeySHot has the 2 modes!
Nurbs and Polygons!
But it's some expansive! :)

Moi Itself is some cool ! :)

I'm using Simlab and I'm just a hobbyist. Moi and Simlab work very well together and its easy to get nice looking renders. Happy to talk about my experience with it or to upload video or pictures.

Thanks to all.
Looks like Thea Render could be a good solution to start. Here are some other solutions for Keyshot PRO poor fans:
1. The best of and better than Keyshot: Maxwell Render Studio + HDR Light Studio. Total price is like Keyshot PRO but this solution has a lot of better features than Keyshot PRO.
2. Arion Studio + HDR Light Studio. Total price is less than Keyshot PRO, but has less features and materials library is not so developed.
3. Zbrush + Keyshot plug-in with Keyshot Bridge. Total price is less than Keyshot PRO, but it works completely as Keyshot PRO, exept import feature. So you can import only through Zbrush and work only with Zbrush-supported formats. OBJ format is ok, so it could be good for someone.