Well said Pete!

何処に書いてあったか忘れちゃいそうなのでコピーしておきます
soloさん上手いこと書いてます

Easy and free Render


Think about it for a moment, apps like Maya, Max, Render-man etc were originally and I suppose still today designed to be learned at tertiary education institute. They were originally and still over priced for the average hobbyist or small freelance artist to afford, so licenses were purchased through large companies accompanied with extensive training courses that covered all the intricacies. Blender, SU and a few other new and free software is free 3D for the masses so is the obvious follow on ... free rendering too. I am sure that this 'free' revolution is hurting those big boys as Indigo, Kt and even cheap apps like Podium and others are reaching results that those very expensive apps are capable of with a smaller learning curve. The exact same way sketchup has hurt the CAD business, at first it was dismissed as a toy and as it matured and limits were exceeded more and more potential customers moved to this easy and fast app that could give mind boggling results with a little practice, so has the cheap and free rendering apps also matured and the gap between the high end and free become smaller and smaller.

Take bump mapping for example, it appeared first with the high end apps and was a complicated procedure to apply, now every render engine has it as a staple and applied with relative ease, So then they introduced displacement mapping to separate themselves from the masses, and that too is now available with the free apps.
So getting to the point you must realize that the more bells and whistles you require from your rendering app you must be willing to endure a learning curve and you are also paying for the most recent bells and whistles when you purchase these high end apps.

Podium is by far the easiest of the lot, the reason for that is it has the least bells and whistles (but does have the important ones and capable of amazing renders), and it works within the SU GUI. Podium 2 will have many more bells, whistles and a few gems, but keeping it simple and uncluttered within SU is the challenge.

Our strive for absolute photo realism has exceeded the marked requirements IMO, it has become more an exhibition of skill and ability, driven by perfectionists and artists and will continue to push the limits and demand new features in order to reach perfection. So hang with the cheap and free apps as they will be close behind catching up to those $$$ apps with every upgrade.