Free renderers and modellers is it good alternative?

[Art 111]

I've decided add new thread, because when I was looking for suiting me 3d modeller and renderer I've found open source or free programs. What do You think about them? Are they good alternative for people who can't afford buy expensive programs and working at a lot of cases with illegals copies?
After my researchers I've decided download and try out Blender -
http://blender.org/cms/Home.2.0.html and Yafray - http://www.yafray.org/.
I'm waiting Your opinion and advice!
What do You think about Yafray raytracer? Does someone use this program?

[Sphynx]

Many, many, many people use this program... (inc. me, professionally)

And yes, if you want a professional free equivalent to commercial applications, Blender is really the only choice. There are plenty of others around, but nothing at the same level, with same across-the-board capabilities really.

[denders]

This thread

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=252648

will be interesting. I see that some of the pictures in the early part are nolonger showing, perhaps its too old. On the last page of the thread, one of the entries has a link to a pdf created from the thread. I checked, that is still available for download (3MB). I also have it saved on my computer if you have problems.

Somehow, from this thread, I eventually arrived at Mil-meshes.

[Alvaro]

Made with Blender & Yafray. They are good options, although there are very good modellers which are really cheap, such as Silo, Modo and XSI Foundation.

http://img470.imageshack.us/img470/2791/composicio2b6el.jpg

[mrys]

For rendering free PovRay is very good - IMO better then YafRay, and probably the best between free soft of this kind. There are version of Blender supporting PovRay render, but not using all its possibility.

[Alvaro]

For rendering free PovRay is very good - IMO better then YafRay, and probably the best between free soft of this kind.

If you look for a free raytracer, all of them are good options. Yafray can outperform povray in some situations and sometimes is Povray which produces better results.

Povray is not the best raytracer neither YafRay; Kerkythea of Sunflow can produce great results as well, since they make use of the latest raytracing/GI trends and theories.

Anyway, only two of them are truly Open Source: YafRay and SunFlow.

[mrys]

Yafray can outperform povray in some situations and sometimes is Povray which produces better results.

Povray is not the best raytracer neither YafRay; Kerkythea of Sunflow can produce great results as well, since they make use of the latest raytracing/GI trends and theories.

I think, that all depend on how you are skilled in using a "tool". In every of mentioned renderer you can get good results if you know what they can and what they can't.