Personal preference for rendering engines

[digitalphaser]

Blender's Cycles is a fairly universal rendering and suitable for various scenes. But the render is not quite ready.
1. Rendering results are very noisy. Increasing the number of samples and caustic dramatically increase rendering time.
2. Cycles is GPU render. Needed expensive video card with CUDA support.
3. Complicated rendering settings.
4. Very difficult material editor.
5. Inconvenient HDRI lighting.

Renders are usually expensive software. Although there are no bad exceptions. For example: Toolbag, Arion, Thea Render, Indigo.

I have GPU nVidia Quadro graphics card but for CAD models I prefer simple and fast CPU renders: KeyShot(expensive) and more cost-effective variant SimLab Composer(very good for architecture, interiors, mechanical products etc...).
For different scenes and tasks I use different renders.

[Gare]

Okay, I'm going to re-title this thread!

digitalphaser? Opinions on Arnold, RenderMan, other really expensive rendering engines?

-g

[digitalphaser]

I have not tested these renders. Although it seems to me that they are more suitable for video production, animation, FX etc... So probably complex.
It is not my world.
By the way, Arnold is cheaper than KeyShot. Rendermann is proprietary commercial software(free for non commercial use).
I like Maxwell Render too.

[Gare]

Maxwell rocks, but modo's rendering engine is pretty nice, too. I used it for many animation sequences when I used to do tutorials on Xara xone.

Fast, excels at rendering photorealistic glass, easy to use.

-g

[digitalphaser]

Yes. I would like to try all software. But unfortunately very limited in time.
To understand the benefits of the software needed days, sometimes weeks. Therefore, I try it sometimes, between this and then.
By the way, I recently found a new renderer ViasualDesigner 3D (GPU and CPU). I downloaded the trial. But so far I have not found the time to test it. Interesting!

[Mike Bailey]

I only know what I use, I have the Keyshot bridge for Zbrush 4, Modo 902 and Vue 9, I get good results from them all, Keyshot and Modo are the fastest, Vue 9 is slow but I like it a lot. I also like the rendering engines in Poser (Firefly) and Bryce . Bryce is another one that can take a long time to render a scene.

[theinonen]

How about someone creates simple scene and put it available, so we can use different renderers and post pictures here to see which one is the best in real life test?