MicrostockGroup

A lot of people do 3D renderings and upload the results to stock photo sites. 

I've seen stuff made by every conceivable app, so you should use what you know and what you enjoy using.

For me personally, Cinema 4D, Vue, and Poser are my main 3D apps.  I occasionally fire up an old version of 3DS Max I got years ago and the free version of Bryce that Daz gave away.

Yeah, I'm planning to do those, just need to find the time   Now I focused on concept shots with characters (one of them is in my avatar), just need to figure out what IS wants since atm they are rejecting most of my work.

IS does not like 3D renders. All of mine are hand modeled, custom textures. No canned stuff. Out of about 50 uploaded there, they have taken 5. One was Christmas, one was industrial, and one was a jewelry piece. The others I forget.So have gone back to photos only on IS.

I don't know, maybe they take 3D stuff from exclusives? Because I certainly see a lot of substandard 3D work on there. At first I was perplexed, now just don't waste my time loading it. The 3D does well everywhere else.

I don't use it or even do 3d etc but truespace is being given away at the moment

http://www.caligari.com/


Phil

Cinema 4D has a plugin for bringing Poser models into C4D and you can render them there, if you have C4D.  Same thing with Vue.

Nice render, looks very realistic (just the dark part of the spoon is a bit wierd. I also need a new computer for renders I might try to get access to a render slave at our college, but I think it's busy all the time.

Displacement map probably? Btw, try this quiz (it's not that hard, they could have supplied even better renders ):
http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/fakeorfoto/

It doesn't look like displacement though.  Those threads have roundness to them.

White is up, black is down. What happens if you create a blend in between them that passes from white to black exponentially? Like first its 0 then 10 then 20 then 40 ... all the way to black. You basicly get a rounded displacement.

You can click on them and that enlrages them. Don't know if that's enough though.

Easy depends on the software you use and what is available for reference and teaching.

Blender is an outstanding FREE program, but the support for it is considerably lacking compared to commercial packages.  And I couldn't figure out how to do anything useful with it.

Finally, I bought an old version of 3DS Max off eBay along with a book and found a good site with video tutorials.  Then I was able to actually use it.  I was gonna upgrade to the latest version of 3DS Max, but I an AE tutorial I have also has a 3D component to it and showed how to set up Blender to look and act like 3DS Max, so now I'm moving into Blender.

That said, of all the 3D programs I've tried Cinema 4D had "the" easiest interface to learn and the workflow matches AE, so I found it very easy to work in.  Until recently when the new v11 was announced, I was only really unhappy with the render engine, but their new engine was written from scratch and rivals that of dedicated renderers.

In my opinion C4D is easier to learn if you know how to use Adobe apps because they purposely designed the interface and workflow to be "adobe like" to grab that market.

3DS Max is better (at the moment) for realism and has more 3rd Party support (tutorials and such).

I've only used Maya and Lightwave at the local university because I can't afford either.

What will rock is when the Blender team is finished with the plugin to import Poser/Bryce objects/scenes and you can use the free Daz 3D/Bryce (or pay a few bucks for Poser) and have a really good free render engine in Blender.

It is indeed a displacement map 

Its pretty amazing. You would never know its not real unless someone tipped you off.  Can only imagine how accurate software will be 10 years from now.