Quote - i'm afraid to look at how much octane and the plug in goes for >.< do most people basically use blender as a gateway to the other renderers?

I wouldn't say that.  Most Blender users are using Cycles now, and not these other plugin renderers.  I think Luxrender is being used more by Poser and Daz users than Blender, and some of those other renderers don't have much of a following yet, because Blender already has Cycles built in, and it's a great engine that is also still in development.

I think 3dsmax still leads all other software for the amount of plugin renderers available and in use, although that means nothing to most users here.  However, most render engines build plugins to that app first, because it has such a large user base, and has proven to be a springboard for the success of many plugin render engines (Vray to name just one).  Users of that app seem to be willing to spend the money, and are always looking for render engines that are ground-breaking and fast.  Octane, for example, gained it's success primarily as a 3dsMax plugin render engine.

If you use Blender, I'd suggest just learning to use Cycles.  It's as good as most of these other engines, and there's no additional setup required.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.