So after reading through some of the rendering posts, I finally pulled the trigger and purchased Keyshot. I needed something for some product renderings, and so KS looked like a winner. Super happy with it! Here's one of the renderings I did within the first hour of "playing":

Nice -- !

Congratulations.

Hi Anoroc.

Congratulation for your first render!

And KS it's really a winner choice.
Some times ago it was my very first choice for rendering purposes, but unfortunately it exceed my budget.

See you.

To be honest, that was more like my 10th render, but all in one day :P I really like the simple interface. I was drooling over KeyShot about a year ago, but I couldn't justify dropping almost $1k on it for hobby use. I was pretty happy to finally "need" it :P I have Flamingo for Rhino, but I find the interface frustrating. Plus, I really try to stick with MOI for everything I do :)

Looking good!

I'm also sticking to Keyshot, after having used many renderers (finalRender, V-Ray, Maxwell, Mental Ray, iRay and Cycles). I've recently utilized a Keyshot for ZBrush to the full stand-alone Keyshot Xmas upgrade offer.

You have also SimLab who has an easy UI Render! (3 seconds) ;)
Happy new year!

Looks great Anoroc. Congrats on your purchase and now significantly lighter wallet! :-)

Metin - My first renderer was Maxwell - just curious - why KeyShot & not Maxwell?

Hi Ced,

The most important reason why I prefer Keyshot above Maxwell is ease of use. I love Keyshot's fast drag & drop workflow, with a clear interface, easy HDR lighting and reflections, prefab materials and visually oriented texture mapping options.

Having said that, I have so far never encountered a renderer that matched reality closer than Maxwell. I still miss it sometimes in that respect. But realism does not equal appeal, and I can create appealing renderings using Keyshot much faster than I could in Maxwell.

Metin -

I have the same experience as you. I've used Keyshot since it first came out as Hypershot (2008?).

I tried Maxwell a couple of years ago, and I agree that on certain scenes it has better realism. However, because Keyshot is so much faster to set up, I can try several camera, lighting and material combinations in the time it took me to set up a single Maxwell shot.

So in the end, I feel I can experiment more and get a better overall result in Keyshot in less time. Because I use Keyshot in my business, and time is money, I continue to use it.

Ed Ferguson

I totally second this, Ed!