I am getting to the stage where the renderings done in Shark are ok for general presentation but more of my clients wish to use images to sell to large retailers and seeing that there does not seem to be any timetable for including high level rendering in Shark I need to purchase another renderer.

Has anyone got any suggestions. I really don't want to spend hours learning a new program.

I have a Mac Book Pro laptop which is my faster mac which could be set for rendering while I model up on my desktop.

Maxwell render looks interesting but complex while Buckspeed looks easy but limited in terms of material and also there seems to be a problem with adding materials.

Some advice would be very welcome.

Cinema 4D with the Advanced Render Module can create fairly realistic images, but it is not cheap. Also, there is a learning curve, so expect to commit time to educte yourself. Hypershot looks like a strong option too, just not as feature rich as Cinema 4D. Can you be more specific about your clients needs?
Tem

Damiane, I'm a little confused by what you mean, because I thought that Shark's rendering wasn't that bad at all. Rendering is a bit of a fine art (personally I also think that rendering is overrated- valuing the quality of the presentation over the quality of model design- but that is just my opinion).

Judging by what I have read, and when I've tried to do my own terrible rendering (see Solidworks rendering below- notice crap shadow placement!!!), that you really need to know which controls do what, and how they do what they do- all very confusing.

Personally I'd buy a copy of Cheetah3D (79) and learn how to render by posting the results on the C3D forum, and get some feedback from Luke or Frank- the 'C3D Render Masters' for now, and then bring your experience back here to the Shark forum to share with us- see how the two compare! :)

Here's a good one from Luke;

http://www.cheetah3d.de/forum/showthread.php?t=3095

http://www.cheetah3d.de/forum/showthread.php?t=2864

surely not the best results achievable compared w/ C4D or 3DS but relatively easy to learn (no modeling) is [URL="http://www.abvent.com/"]Art•lantis[/URL].

Blender has a steep learning curve, if time is money probably not the best choice...


Norbert

Looking at your files, I can't help but think that the plastic dividers would gain some added reality with caustic lighting characteristic ( light diffusing into the surface). Maxwell Render is very strong in this area, and the materials library is mostly much user generated ( around 2500 materials I think), but it may be a little more than what you are looking for.

At any rate, I've used Maxwell infrequently mainly due to its heavy computational requirements (I have a total of 4 computing nodes available with any number or cores, but I run on a Pentium IV) which I expect to remedy with the purchase next year of a Nehalem Gainestown (dual processor/quad core) Mac Pro configuration.

tom

....and Shark FX!?

Realtime adjustments??? Baby!- where you been for the last few years?!?

As an ex-photographer, even I'm convinced after looking at the web pix! :D

Tim, can we get this Maxwell into Shark FX? :D :cool:

You do need a dual core at least for Maxwell .. but the results are uncannily real

You also need to invest time. The forums however are very very good

Fry is another one worth looking at as it branched from the Maxwell project, I believe

Tim's now got a good OBJ export path to Maxwell. However, a Maxwell plug-in would be preferable .. though mostly for marketing advantage

I must say I am sorely tempted by Maxwell though it does look rather daunting. If we had it as a plug in at least this forum would be useful too.

Jol I gather that you use it. How long did you take to get up to speed on it?

then check [URL="http://www.abvent.com/"]Artlantis Render[/URL]


Norbert

Modo looks good, but it's almost the same price as Maxwell, although it includes a modeler and animations features. I can't speak for the quality personally, but I do recall that the developer, Luxology, licensed some Renderman technology from Pixar.

tom