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Any recommendations on rendering software?

monstersandmachines
Heroic Explorer
I'm gettting great results with Medium but I'm at the point where I'd like to start getting some high quality final renders for print or other usage (where merely taking a pic with the internal camera does not deliver). What is everyone using for their final renders? 
11 REPLIES 11

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
If you can work cycles, it's a two minute job to get the object into blender, along with the vertex colour, via meshlab, by converting to collada (.dae) format.

oh9bnqptqnp1.jpg

monstersandmachines
Heroic Explorer
I am familiar with Blender 3D, I will give it a try. I'm not a huge fan of the interface/workflow but the price is right. Nice work on Pinhead BTW.

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
Yeah, the blender interface is a typical open source dogs breakfast but, like you say, the price is right.

There's also a quick and cheaty multiple lightsource trick, if you just want a quick screenie https://forums.oculus.com/community/discussion/49040/how-to-3-point-lighting-straight-out-of-medium



monstersandmachines
Heroic Explorer
P3nT4gR4m: thanks that is a great idea! I'll have to give that a try.

So an update: I got Meshlab working and was able to get a some models exported with all colors intact. I uploaded a couple to my sketchfab page https://sketchfab.com/chuckleone I brought another sculpt into Blender 3D but I haven't used Blender in about 10 months so I have to completely re-learn how to use it. You're completely right about it, the UI is a nightmare. I hope the Medium team can add a rendering option to this app, hell I'd even take what Scupltris has which is really basic.

monstersandmachines
Heroic Explorer
Update 2: I tried importing some meshes into Sculptris for rendering and found that if I imported a mesh that had UV data added to it with Meshlab, it was totally messed up. I'll have to do a little research on what settings Sculptris likes but I did have some luck with meshes that came straight out of Medium like this: 3y1nzc81doup.png

Sculptris doesn't have a lot of options for rendering so I doubt I will use it for any final rendering but it's nice to play around with.

monstersandmachines
Heroic Explorer
Render test 2 w/ DOF and AA
ig3soptds811.png

ozelon
Protege

Just a few render options:



The easiest way with the best result is most likely keyshot.
You can get crazy high rez meshes in there and it’s very easy to learn. Afaik
it can’t do atmospheric effects. Also very expensive.



 



Then there are also all of the regular plugins for maya,
max, modo etc.



-         
Mental ray



-         
Vray (my preferred out of these)



-         
Red shift



-         
Octane



-         
Etc.


if you have a lower poly mesh and textures:

Marmorset toolbag for game resolution meshes, real time but looks decent

Substance painter besides being an awesome texturing tool also has a pretty solid render engine, also game resolution.

monstersandmachines
Heroic Explorer
Thanks ozelon, I would love to try Keyshot but being an independent artist with $0 income coming from my work I can't spend much on this part of the toolset. It's looking more and more that I will probably use Blender, even if I do spend a little on a rendering engine. I'll take a look into Substance and Marmoset, the assets I am making will eventually go into a Unity 3D VR game I am working on so these might be good options as well. For now I just want to get something that will allow me to make a print quality lossless file that I can send to a printer for making gallery quality prints that I can sell.

P3nT4gR4m
Consultant
Blender workflow is awesome quick if you forget about UV's and just use the vertex colour map plugged into cycles and then do everything else procedurally. If you want to go game ready later and do the whole retopo thing, you'll still have a textured hipoly you'll be able to bake down so you won't have wasted any time either.

The downside is you'll need to learn the cycles node editor but, since RT gfx are all going pbr these days, you're probably going to want to get your hands dirty sooner or later anyway.