Endless material difficulties

Sauronbloo

I've been trying to do a project, building a structure with lots of natural light. I've made a gymnasium with a roof covered in window panels. I didn't have much of a hard time until I started trying to make it render realistically. I started with shaderlight, which was good, but looked too cartoony, not photorealistic. As I searched for better materials, to try and make it look more real, I kept finding .vismats as the really good materials, so I figured out what used them and downloaded a trial. That left me with vray now installed, on top of SL. Vray was very confusing, but I was able to get a few pretty nice renders before I got completely lost, and couldn't even re-render the same things I'd already done as well as before. Although many great materials were easy to use w V4SU, there were TONS of awesome materials that weren't vismat, and I wanted to use them, but I guess you need EVEN MORE programs, and some skill to turn the alpha/bump/etc. channels into a true material/texture. The inability to use all of these mats, plus the unrelenting confusion that goes along with 100,000 settings for every aspect caused me to yearn for a simple solution. While trolling the web for rendering tips with vray, I came across a mention of Twilight, hailed as easy to use as compared to V4SU, so I gave that a spin. I'm now on twilightrender.com trying to figure out why my twilight templates don't work half the time, but I'm back here to beg for help in general.

I want to find a render program that I can use a tutorial to figure out how and why to change settings to suit my needs. I don't need world-class images, but I'd like it to at least look like a decent cgi, though I don't expect to achieve photo-realism. All the tuts I've seen for vray are just rote copying of steps, without any explanation of why you need to change vray's indirect illumination post-processing saturation from 1.0 to .9. It doesn't really help to watch someone set up a perfect kitchen shot, when I'm trying to set up an outdoor view of a building, and have no reference for what these settings mean to my scene.

Can anyone point me to either a simple to use program that can give great default results, rather than superb custom results(doubtful, but wishful thinking)? Or point me in the direction of tutorials that will actually teach me how to set up my program to render MY SCENE great, rather than some scene made by another guy in 2008?

I really appreciate any advice, and please understand that any tone of bitterness is just frustration, and I apologize.
I have shaderlight trial that just ran out, vray trial still good, twilight still good, thinking of trying thea, but want to spend my time finalizing my project, not endlessly trial-ing render program after render program. I'm on win7 with SU2013. THANKS!!

Daniel

Your choices of rendering programs available seems countless, with just as many opinions as to which one is best. It would behoove you to peruse the Extensions & Applications Discussions forum to learn about which programs are available, and to ask pertinent questions.

Personally, I've been experimenting with LumenRT and have been pleased with the results.

Sauronbloo

Daniel- I understand that this is akin to asking "what's the best way to lose weight", but if you also add in what diets you've tried, and what issues you've had with them, as well as what your desired result is, then a knowledgeable dietitian should be able to give you some good suggestions.
You tell me to read threads of others debating renderers, but I've read many and only ended up with more questions than before. I've tried numerous programs based on what I've read in these and other forums, but am no closer to a solution than I was on the first day that I tried the first program. Reading more discussion really doesn't seem to be the answer, and I've spent way longer trying out renderers than I did making the model in the first place! I know there are many choices, but given my skill level, the issues that I'm having with my current programs, and my desired result, I can't imagine that there's not a single recommendation to be made, other than basically doing a google search(which was my very first action, by the way). I'm not lazy, and don't consider myself stupid or slow. I've done my homework before making any moves, but I'm at my wit's end with all the complications and disappointments. I don't ask for help as my first option, but after reaching the extent of what my level of knowledge can infer about these programs. I've searched google for shaderlight help, been on forums for vray help, forums for twilight help, now I should get a new program and research for help on that? I know you're only trying to help, but there's gotta be a better suggestion than "search the forums" and "try a new program", unless there is a thread with specific info you feel might help me out, or a reason why you would recommend me using a specific program, given what I'm going through with what I'm using (like; "if you're having trouble with materials rendering as seen, x program is really straightforward", "I used to pull my hair out trying to get the render to look like the SU model, but x program was so easy for me with that issue")
I know no one gets paid to help me, I'm not trying to be demanding, but this is the help I need, either someone can offer that or not, but I feel that pointing me to general discussions will only waste more of my time, and this project has already grown WAAAAAY out of the scope that I was prepared to take on. Thanks a bunch!

rtd

There a lot of choices out there, as you know.
All renderers have their lighting and material systems which are generally not compatible with those of the other renderers. This makes it difficult to learn and evaluate very many of them.
If you are looking for suggestions - Don't waste too much time setting up materials in SU. I use Twilight and am happy with it's biased/un-biased approach.