3D Rendering Software Review

September 3, 2017
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Research
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After following Tim Kaminski’s 3DCoat prop tutorial, I wanted to test which software could give me the best looking renders.

Contents
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Intro

I recently went through Tim Kaminski's “3D Prop Pipeline” tutorial series to learn more about prop modeling techniques in 3DCoat, Zbrush, and Substance Painter.

At the end of the series, Tim rendered his prop inside of Substance Painter's Iray renderer. Instead of just stopping with Iray, I used my model as an excuse to test many of the popular rendering programs that are out there.

Process

Before I could make any renders, I had to learn the basics of each software package. Fortunately, Allegorithmic and Youtube already had a number of guides for setting up materials in other programs. While exploring each application, my goal was to make nice studio lighting renders, similar to ones you might find on sites like Behance or Artstation.

This was my first time using many of these programs, so all of my results and opinions come from a beginner’s perspective. Hopefully this blog post can be of some use to other 3D artists trying to figure out which program they should render their models in.

Note

The software packages listed below are ranked from favorite to least favorite:

Software

Marmoset Toolbag

Pros  👍

  • Real-time renderer
  • Quick and easy to export images and turntable videos
  • Affordable
  • Ideal choice for rendering individual objects
  • Easy to adjust lighting and HDR maps
  • Options for a transparent floor and background color/blur tweaking
  • Has lots of customization and tunable options like post processing effects
  • Fast to setup and make test renders with while you work on your models
  • Easier to use out of the box than other real-time renderers like Unity and UE4

Cons  👎

  • Some issues with normal maps if not baked and setup correctly
  • Time based free trial with small watermarks
  • Takes extra work to set up materials for multiple objects and things like glass
  • If you're rendering a complex scene or don't care about nice product shots, you might as well just use UE4 instead
  • There's free software that can achieve a similar look, but Marmoset is much easier to use
Marmoset Toolbag Render
Marmoset Render
Marmoset Toolbag Render 2
Marmoset Render 2

Link

Substance Painter to Marmoset Toolbag Setup

Redshift for Maya

Pros  👍

  • GPU based renderer
  • Extremely fast, works great for quick previewing and iteration
  • Affordable
  • Materials are easy to set up
  • No time limit on it's trial version
  • Easy to light via an HDR dome light and area lights

Cons  👎

  • Trial version for Maya has large watermarks
  • Can't see light shapes in Maya's Viewport 2.0
  • Built-in Redshift export option for Substance Painter gave strange looking normals
Redshift Render
Redshift Render
Redshift Render 2
Redshift Render 2
Link

Substance Painter to Redshift Setup

Keyshot

Pros  👍

  • One of the easiest out of the box solutions
  • Has pre-made studio lighting options and HDR maps that you can just throw on your model and get nice results
  • Setting up materials from Substance Painter to Keyshot is very quick
  • Has an HDRI editor that lets you customize your HDR maps
  • Not as fast as Marmoset, but still updates its render preview quickly

Cons  👎

  • Customizing lighting outside of the presets is tedious, you have to apply a light material to 3D shapes and they're not very easy to manipulate
  • Very expensive software, should probably evaluate other options before choosing Keyshot
  • Limited trial that includes an insignificant watermark
Keyshot Render
Keyshot Render
Keyshot Render 2
Keyshot Render 2
Link

Substance Painter to Keyshot Setup

Unreal Engine 4

Pros  👍

  • Real-time renderer
  • Easier to get a nicer looking result out of the box than Unity (with a similar studio lighting setup)
  • Has a built-in option to export an image from a camera with no additional setup or scripting needed
  • Easy to render out a video using it's Sequencer tools
  • Quick, free, and works especially well with many objects or more complex scenes
  • Supports a variety of post process effects

Cons  👎

  • Takes some additional work to set up its material graph vs drag and drop in Unity
  • No presets for things like an invisible shadow plane or easy background color tweaking
  • Doesn't offer area lights and requires some extra work tweaking its light baking and world settings to get high quality soft shadows
UE4 Render
UE4 Render
UE4 Render 2
UE4 Render 2
Link

Substance Painter to UE4 Setup

Substance Painter Iray

Pros  👍

  • Comes built into Substance Painter, no additional setup needed
  • No need for setting up materials and textures all over again in a separate program
  • Can use HDR image lighting to get a nice looking render
  • Has lots of post processing options to help tweak the final render
  • Fast results if you don't care too much about finessing the final image or want to see your progress as you texture your model

Cons  👎

  • Limited lighting options
  • Not as robust or customizable as the Maya rendering plugins
Iray Render
Iray Render
Iray Render 2
Iray Render 2
Link

Substance Painter to Iray Setup

Unity Engine

Pros  👍

  • Real-time renderer
  • Setup from Substance Painter to Unity is straight forward and the material is easy too hook up
  • All that's needed is a directional light, a curved background panel, and optionally an HDR image as the skybox
  • Good for speed and for your renders you can just take screen grabs of the scene
  • Becomes a more favorable option as your scene grows and you have an environment in place
  • Easy to get a quick GIF if you're using a tool like GifCam to capture animations
  • Every feature needed for a nice looking render is free (unless you use the Asset Store)

Cons  👎

  • Takes additional work to get soft shadows, might require finding an asset on the Unity Asset Store or creating your own custom solution
  • There's no image export or render option, you have to find or write a script to render your camera out into an image file format
Unity Render
Unity Render
Unity Render 2
Unity Render 2
Link

Substance Painter to Unity Setup

V-Ray for Maya

Pros  👍

  • Fairly quick render and IPR render time
  • Felt almost as fast as the GPU based renderers
  • Easy to set up its materials and lighting to match Substance Painter
  • Has options for placing a dome light with an HDR texture and some area lights

Cons  👎

  • The VRay frame buffer needs to be tweaked because of gamma problems, might be better to just use the normal IPR render
  • Has contrast, color, and gamma issues, as well as some discrepancy between renders and how they actually look when saved (try both raw and color-managed image when saving your render)
  • Maya trial plugin has a time limit that's difficult to uninstall and extend via another email account
  • A pricier rendering option
V-Ray Render
V-Ray Render
V-Ray Render 2
V-Ray Render 2
Link

Substance Painter to V-Ray Setup

Arnold for Maya

Pros  👍

  • Adds a nice list of lights (area, dome, portal, etc)
  • Supports HDR maps
  • Rendering setup is pretty easy. After setting up your material, all you need is a curved backdrop panel, some area lights, and maybe a dome light
  • Built into Maya 2017
  • Lots of sample scenes and resources online

Cons  👎

  • Painfully slow, pretty much made me unable to use any other application on my computer while it was rendering (although a friend said it worked fine for him)
  • Renders were ugly when I used any color tinted HDR maps, but were fine with clean studio lighting HDRs
Arnold Render
Arnold Render
Arnold Render 2
Arnold Render 2
Link

Substance Painter to Arnold Setup

Arnold Learning Scenes

Substance Painter 2 to Arnold for Maya 2017 Workflow

Setup

Substance Painter Setup
Substance Painter Setup
Substance Painter Setup
Substance Painter Setup 2
Unity Setup
Unity Setup
UE4 Setup
UE4 Setup
UE4 Setup
UE4 Setup 2
Keyshot Setup
Keyshot Setup
Marmoset Toolbag Setup
Marmoset Toolbag Setup
Arnold Setup
Arnold Setup
Redshift Setup
Redshift Setup
V-Ray Setup
V-Ray Setup
Additional Links

Tim Kaminski's Youtube Channel

Tim Kaminski's Artstation

Zbyg Studio Lighting HDR Pack 1

Zbyg Studio Lighting HDR Pack 2

Zbyg Studio Lighting HDR Pack 3

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