Guys cease fire
Chill down :D:D
You’re right - with all those folks in the world, you can’t just love everybody, I guess. Now, where is the ignore list…!?
my original post was to ask what if and how any rendering aps. would work w/
zbrush, i guess the answer is no and none.
Umm many renderes works with zbrush… as you can import .obj in about anything and use normal and displacement maps in most 
I think there’s only ‘one’ person you love Zaphod matey 
Sorry your post was hijacked semimoto 
My try to answer had been Gelato/Ribelato from NVIDIA. These are still there, still free, they may need some adjustments (detailed how to included).
Could make it work with Maya7 and Silo.
Maybe if you do a search at sites like sourceforge.net - you might find some others that are free or not that expensive (and hard to handle).
This took about 20 minutes to set up in Vue Infinite 5. The brain was modeled in ZBrush from ZSpheres and the goblet is a SweepProfile3D object. The bowl is a boolean I threw in. The only texture’s are the eyes and the tabletop. All else are quick materials whipped up in Infinite. I forgot to change the specular on the eyes and they are just spheres with a texture, so not to realistic but not Infinites fault. Infinite does great glass and transparencies. This is an Global Illumination rendering of an indoor scene. If I had used hdri it would have been even better. Infinites material editer is easy to use and master. It took me about 1 month to figure everything out. The possibilities with materials is endless. Vue Infinite 6 will also have sss and displacement and nearly photorealistic skies. Vue main problem is it is touchy software that does not play well with anything but the best GPU’s. It has problems with quads in models with high poly counts, but if you convert too tri’s it handles about 1.5 million on an individual model on a PC with 2 gigs of RAM. The Eco system is awesome for outdoor scenes. I have never pushed the limit but have ran it up many million poly’s from the Ecosystem without problems. Infinite has G-Buffer and Multi-Pass options for compositing and individual object controls on about anything. This image is simple one pass without them enabled. One problem is that to get good anti-aliasing you get best results by rendering double size and then reducing. Infinites aa when set to an acceptable level sends render times through the roof. This image took about 7 hours as is but was a much larger size. I had to reduce it too this which removed the detail of the small veins on the brain that I wish you could see. The file size was way to big to post so this is a crop of part of a scene.
I have spent 2 months trying to get anything even remotely acceptable out of LightWave 9 but the interface sucks and the learning curve is ridiculous. Since I understand that LW9’s interface is now nearly identical to the other renderers being used, nodes and what not, without personal 1 on 1 training it would take forever to learn with these user-very-unfriendly interfaces. I’ve always assumed that was on purpose to aftermarket the training. Just my opinion that they have no intention of ever making a user friendly interface ever or they would have done it long ago. Carrara is a smidgen better but not in a leauge with Infinite for quality or ease of use.
If you want awesome stills and don’t mind the render times Infinite is great. It will do the same quality animations but I’m not into that. If I had gone a step further with hdri and good textures your jaw would be on the table. Most people who have it just need to learn it which would take a tenth or less time than they spent learning their current renderers. Renderers don’t need to be this hard, they were just designed that way to sell training and guarantee an aftermarket for plug-ins etc…
Cannot agree more with all that Blaine has written and more.
Those that think that Vue is just a program for trees and grass,
should look again.
… better still: you do not (NOT) need Infinite or the upcoming, large version of Vue.
VueEasel is equipped with nearly the same possibilities, and Vue 5 (could be out for a small amount of cash due to the new version, soon) can be expanded by using some add ons (cheapo’s).
In any case: you probably will find no applications more user friendly and capable in this price range.
The added pic: just the WIP of a torso, prepared in Silo, worked over in Z2, rendered in Vue (quickie), using GI and just a small amount of tweaking.
It is more then worth to try the demo - you might get hooked!
Attachments
Carrara is a smidgen better but not in a leauge with Infinite for quality or ease of use.
I disagree. The quality of renders out of Vue aren’t anything special. I could do that render in Truespace 6.6, Blender, or even Poser 5, and that’s saying something. Anyway, my point is- Carrara packs more punch than you think.
Since I understand that LW9’s interface is now nearly identical to the other renderers being used, nodes and what not, without personal 1 on 1 training it would take forever to learn with these user-very-unfriendly interfaces.
Something that bugs me is when a guy harps on and on about how a certain sports game is played, after having played the game once.
Renderers don’t need to be this hard, they were just designed that way to sell training and guarantee an aftermarket for plug-ins etc…
smacks head into a wall repeatedly
Is that your brain in Blaine’s bowl?
No, but it might be if I re-read Blaine’s comment again about why renderers are ‘hard’.
… and there it goes again!
The name of the thread: “a renderer for ZBrush” - not “THE …”.
The most simple thing would have been to list every package that can import obj files and has some kind of a render enginge built within.
But I am sure, even such a “neutral” list would have caused some folks to
react in the old way - there is no application that gets better by discrediting all others.
Every user will have one or two “ideal” apps for each task - only a matter of personal preferences.
So if there is a more then subjective reason to use one special proggie - why not make this the point?