Kixum posted at 4:47AM Sun, 19 June 2016 - #4272977

I guess I'm a little confused. If all you want to do is render Daz content, why isn't Daz studio a passable option?

Very good question.

I want to go way beyond rendering contents.

I want to experiment with dazzling special FX'es, physics and get very high quality renders at a blink of an eye. Daz Studio and Carrara are unfit. for this kind of work.

Possible candidates:

Houdini: At $ 199.- per year it's a steal of a deal, but it's too hard to learn. It's for pros, not hobbyists.

Cinema4D: Excellent package but you need the full studio version - a $3800 deal - to do FX'es and particles and physics and things like that. That is way out of my price range.

Strata 3D: Excellent package. Relatively easy to learn. It has a $19.- monthly subscription plan that you can cancel at anytime. It is more suitable for a photoshop / illustarator / Strata3D pipeline, but it might work with Daz/Poser content. It has an excellent modeler too, in the Hexagon / Silo league.

Cheetan3D: At $99.- it's a literally jaw-dropping deal. It can be viewed as C4D's little brother. It has a particularly well implemented Bullet physics engine with real time simulations, real time particles, a modeler that almost matches Hexagon and Silo features, 2 built-in renderers one of which uses Intel's Embree and is super-fast and, from what I have seen so far, its render quality is superb.

I am right now evaluating Cheetah3D for some possible hobbyist projects. From what I have seen so far it beats Carrara hands-down in almost every respect. Its only 'weakness' is that it is Mac only, so Windows users are left in the cold.

More on Cheetah3D later.