Lower cost rendering programs

pitrak

I didn't notice anyone mention shaderlight? I played with it only breifly and thought it might have promise, but I do not yet know much about the rendering game yet. What do you more experienced rendering folk think of it?

I've played with both Shaderlight and Twilight. IMO Shaderlight was too limited. The realtime preview is a plus. But on all other areas, Twilight wins I think. The fact that you cannot use your own bumpmaps is a big downside to shaderlight. That might change in the future, but for now it is too limited to grow into I think.
With Twilight you can make more progress over time. And if you've reached the limits, you can add kerkythea or thea.
I have bought Thea just before the price went up, and I'm planning to buy twilight soon. I thinks I'll use twilight most of the time. But with the quality materials over there on the Thea forum, I should really expand my (yet to be explored...) rendering skills to thea asap.

Stinkie

There's a 64-bit version of Kerkythea on the way. I'd say that's good news for prospective Twilight users.

Ecuadorian

Pick up to three:

-Low cost
-Photorealistic
-Fast render times
-Good SketchUp integration

You can't have it all.

srx

Ecuadorian, do you know which one to remove for Twilight?

Frederik

All four applies for TWR - actually...

Although some perhaps will start arguing about "Fast render times", I'd say; it all depends on your scene/model, the materials used, lightning, wether you're using one of the biased or unbiased presets and - of course - how fast your computer is...

Others may debate the "Low cost" and we need to acknowledge that although 99,00 USD is a low price to many, the price is high for many people in other parts of the world...

My statement is, that compared to other render applications, all of the above points applies for TWR...
So... It's impossible to say exactly which one to leave out from the list, since it will depend on the individual person...

If I personally had to leave out one, it would be "Fast render times"...
To me it's also a little fuzzy... Fast... Compared to what...??
To me it's fast, to others it's Acceptable, while others again may find it slow...