There is another point to the "before and after" image that I posted, and that is the amount of effort necessary to get good results. Reality is about getting the highest level of realism with little effort. As lights behave like real lights, the lighting of a scene is much simpler and predictable

Materials have types so they are easier to setup and customize. So, it's a matter of efficiency. Sure you can get decently realistic results with 3Delight and Firefly but they require much more work and an intimate knowledge of the idiosyncharsies of the renderer. 

I wrote Reality because I was disattisfied with the unrealistic way 3D renderers use light, nowhere near real light, and materials. There are things that no biased renderer can actually simulate. For example, LuxRender calculates the amount of absorption of the light traversing a volume, based on the thickness of the volume. The light coming out of a piece of glass, for example, is weaker and tinted based on the color of the glass and its thickness. That brings a subtlety that is not available with biased renderers like Firefly, no matter how we work on it

Lastly, let's look at the work of Eli, aka ArtXtreme. If you look at his gallery you will see several pieces that are quite impressive. He is quite the skilled artist. He can definitely spend  hours and hour tweaking the Studio shaders to get some decent results. The point is: why? Why do we have to micromanage a biased renderer when we can get bettter results with the simple application of the appropriate material?

Cheers.

Paolo

https://www.preta3d.com
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The Reality Gallery: https://reality-plug-in.deviantart.com