Arnold is a fast CPU-based ray tracing renderer that was developed for VFX studio Sony Pictures Imageworks but has since been integrated into the Autodesk software offering. It is capable of real-time rendering, meaning that when you make changes during the rendering, they are immediately included in ongoing calculations. This, in turn, speeds up the process of developing your desired look. With this 3D rendering software, you can create about any pass imaginable, giving you a huge amount of control over the final look in the compositing stage.

Being one of the preferred 3D rendering software solutions in the effects industry, Arnold supports volumetrics. In addition, its material editor is node-based, giving commonality across many programs in the VFX industry today. Many presets are available out of the box, and the active user community writes additional nodes.

Arnold has supported plug-ins available for Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, and Katana.

Its wide range of features makes Arnold one of the best 3D rendering software for special effects.

Price: Three subscription tiers at $50/ month, $400/ year, $1,200/ 3 years

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Artlantis is a 3D rendering software that has been developed with an eye on the needs of architects and designers. It provides a wide selection of preset-like indoor/outdoor lighting for a quick turnaround. The materials inside Artlantis are physically based to achieve photorealistic results. Also, among the advanced shaders are luminous materials that extend the range of possibilities with which scenes can be lit.

The built-in render manager in this 3D rendering software allows you to distribute the computing load evenly among your local computers, minimizing the overall rendering time. Artlantis is available in a version for high-resolution still images and another that can produce high-resolution 3D renderings, iVisit360 panoramas, VR Objects, and sequences.

Recent updates to the software include compatibility with the universal IFC file type. Similarly new is the ability to grade scenes with LUTs for uniform ambiance, a refreshed MediaStore asset library, and simplified user interface options.

There’s a caveat, though. As of August 2023, there’s only a French version of the newest Artlantis Rt2 available. If you need English menus, you can access older versions like Artlantis 2021.

Price: Three subscription tiers at $50/ month, $400/ year, or $1,200/ 3 years.

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Blender is a free and open-source 3D creation suite. It is a cross-platform software that supports the entire 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering composting, and motion tracking.

With its latest 3.5 release, Blender offers an unbiased rendering engine called Cycles, capable of unidirectional path tracing with multiple importance samplings and multi-core CPU rendering with SIMD acceleration.

It also offers a physically based real-time renderer called Eevee. Introduced in Blender 2.8, Eevee tackles rendering differently from Cycles. While both can achieve similar-looking results, they have a gulf in how they work (ray-traced vs. rasterized – see our explainer below and which specific scenario they each work best for).

Blender’s third rendering engine, Workbench, is specifically designed for layout, modeling, and previews of scenes, giving users a total of three rending engines with tons of options, all for free.

Price: Free

Get it on: Blender

Chaos Corona offers both biased and unbiased photorealistic 3D rendering. It has become popular for its ease of use as it strives to make users focus on being artists, not technicians. Following the motto “less is more,” Chaos Corona offers a less cluttered UI to reduce setup times. Although a CPU-based solution, the interactive rendering capability of this 3D rendering software can also speed up workflows.

This 3D rendering software is also flexible with regard to realism. Phenomena like caustics that require much computing power can be disabled selectively. Moreover, materials can be created that bend to the artistic vision, not the physical reality. So, a material can be blue when seen directly but have a different color when reflected or refracted.

Its latest release, Chaos Corona 9, enables 3ds Max and Cinema 4D integration and includes many new features. The most prominent ones are procedural clouds, fisheye cameras, Corona Pattern for detailed graphics and tile geometry, Shutter Curve for motion blur control, Chaos Scans for ultra-realistic materials from real-life scans, Chaos Phoenix for realistic fire, smoke, and water simulations, and Chaos Player for more manageable animation assemblies. Bear in mind, however, that Chaos Scans, Phoenix, and Player are only available in the Premium subscription model.

Due to its superb usability, Chaos Corona is rightly a top-rated 3D rendering software.

Price: Corona Solo: $53.90/ month, $358.80/ year. Corona Premium: $67.90/ month, $478.80/ year.

Get it on: Chaos Corona

Another renderer in the Chaos software offering is Enscape, a real-time 3D rendering software primarily geared at architectural visualization. Impressively, this solution eliminates the need to export from BIM software and rework data for presentations as still images or movies. Everything is prepared in the original program.

However, the standout feature of this 3D rendering software is its ability to export project files from Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD, and Vectorworks as standalone executables to provide walkthroughs that can be shared with clients or co-workers. These executables can be used on desktop computers and VR goggles.

The link between the presentations and the original CAD data means you can inspect and evaluate any changes you make in a snap. Apart from the photorealistic render mode, Enscape includes several stylized modes like sketch, paper, and polystyrene for novel looks in your presentations.

The latest version (3.4) introduces easier custom asset management through categories, more accurate sun positions, view adjustment, 210 new interior assets, 52 new materials, and improved reflection calculations.

Enscape is the perfect 3D rendering software for architects who want to flabbergast stakeholders with VR presentations. Rejoice if you’re a student or educator because Chaos also offers a free full-version educational license of Enscape.

Price: Single license $77.90/ month or $514.80/ year. Floating license $898.80/ year

Get it on: Chaos Enscape

Felix is a cloud computing 3D rendering software by architects for architects. It frees professionals who don’t have the resources from the constraints of their hardware by providing an interface that allows easy upload of scene files. Relevant fields include architectural visualization and marketing. All uploaded files are 256-bit encrypted.

While free to access, users pay to download the render — either in credits prepurchased in bundles or as part of a monthly subscription. Render output scales in quality and cost in credits, from free previews, up to 4K resolution images.

Under the hood, it leverages Maxwell Render, an unbiased, high-quality 3D rendering software. In addition, FelixRender provides social network features like sharing of scenes, materials, and assets with colleagues. To populate large and complex scenes, FelixRender adds its own flavor of 3D model instancing to the package.

FelixRender is a convenient cloud 3D rendering software for professionals and imports models from all major 3D modeling programs including 3ds Max, Rhinoceros, Blender, SketchUp, Autocad, Lightwave, and others.

Price: Free plan includes 50 start credits and 2 extra credits/ day. Prepay is £20 for 20 credits and Felix Pro subscription is £120/ month with 200 credits/ month included.

Get it on: Felix Render

FluidRay is a physically based renderer developed for awe-inspiring views of architectural and design projects. An unbiased renderer, lighting is a core strength, with FluidRay able to tackle a wide range of lighting setups.

FluidRay claims that thanks to deep learning and AI (that aren’t explained in more detail), the program boasts fast and accurate performance, utilizing your processing to its best and intelligently caching to your RAM instead of relying on a beefy GPU.

The real-time workflow of this 3D rendering software can be grasped intuitively in just a few minutes. An extensive library of materials and objects for scene-setting helps architects dress a space efficiently, and the use of OSL means new materials can be configured in-app. Looking beyond architecture, it seems that FluidRay is well suited to getting the most out of jewelry and product design renderings.

Price: A simple $14.99/ month.

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Guerilla is an animation lighting development and rendering suite with plenty of feature films to its name, including The Little Prince, Playmobil the Movie, and Ford v Ferarri. It has an easy-to-follow UI tailored toward lighting development, with snappy render previews because it efficiently uses your system’s memory, including precomp caching, aiding re-rendering on the fly. Guerilla’s progressive physically based rendering system comprises two products, Guerilla Station and Guerilla Render (for your rendering nodes), so photorealistic stills and sequences are quickly composed.

The lighting system of Guerilla is highly flexible, allowing, for instance, lighting in specific AOVs. The program offers full OpenEXR support, facilitating the compositing stage by selecting layers and objects in the final rendered image file.

Guerilla Render’s free unlimited single-seat license is particularly interesting for individuals, which allows uncapped usage of either Guerilla Station or Guerilla Render for a single user (including commercially), providing you’re connected to the internet.

Price: Seats for the paid version become cheaper with bulk orders, starting at ~$2,200 (2,000€)/ seat for Guerilla Station and ~$310 (280€)/ node for Guerilla Render.

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Indigo is an unbiased 3D rendering software geared toward architectural visualization and industrial design. Its real-time rendering capability lets you edit scenes and inspect the results instantly. The parameters of every material can be adjusted with shader programs written in the custom Indigo Shader Language.

As of release 4.4, Indigo’s already impressive sky modeling system got much more impressive with real data from NASA and known physically accurate atmospheric effects – it can create geographically specific lighting conditions that other approximation-based systems can’t compete with.

Besides planet-scale lighting sims, the latest Indigo also improves denoising at the gain of overall render speed, lightmap baking, sub-surface scattering support using GPU, and greater texture compression, allowing for larger scenes.

Unlike many other GPU-powered 3D rendering programs, Indigo is not limited to a CUDA-capable NVidia graphics card. It also supports the OpenCL standard used by AMD. To speed up rendering, you can easily tap into a network of cards for additional processing power.

Photorealism appears to be a key strength of Indigo for both architectural visualization and product shots.

Price: A full Renderer 4 License, including the Node and RT license, will set you back $835.

Get it on: Glare Technologies

Iray is a biased GPU renderer software by NVidia. Developed for NVidia’s CUDA technology, Iray is a sophisticated toolbox with lighting and material tools to help artists using Nvidia hardware achieve photorealistic results.

Although developed for real-time usage scenarios, this 3D rendering software brings many features you would expect from a CPU solution, such as instancing, caustics, subsurface scattering, and volumetrics.

To achieve its high-performance photorealism, Iray employs physically-based materials that, in addition to texture data, contain multiple lighting properties, including reflectivity, light emission, scattering, and absorption properties. Standardized as Nvidia’s Material Definition Language, meaning interoperability across different modeling and rendering solutions, this MDL standard helps Iray fit as a valuable part of the production pipeline. Since the 2019 release, Iray’s SDK uses NVIDIA RTX technology in combination with AI denoising, to create photorealistic renderings in seconds.

Often baked into popular modeling software, including Catia, SolidWorks, and NX, Iray is also available as a separately purchasable plugin for 3ds Max, Maya, and Cinema 4D. As of January 2023, the Iray for Rhino product has been discontinued. There’s also an SDK to port for use in your own solution. There is no standalone Iray product, though.

Price: Each Iray plugin costs $295.

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KeyShot is standalone rendering software that brings speed and ease of use to the product visualization process. Extensive libraries of physically accurate models, materials, HDRI environments, exclusive brand-name paints and fabrics, and Pantone and RAL color libraries combine with sophisticated rendering tools such as AI-driven denoising.

The entire process takes place in real-time – as you set up your scene with cameras, materials, and lights, the program continually updates the rendered image. This feature of KeyShot allows you to work much faster than many other solutions. Working with external partners is also streamlined with recent improvements to the collaboration tool KeyShotWeb.

Another handy feature KeyShot offers is KeyVR, developed by Luxion. Any KeyShot model can be loaded into the software with one click for immersive visuals and improved collaboration.

The ease of use and real-time rendering make this 3D rendering software an excellent choice for engineers and architects who want to showcase their work without wasting time learning complex new software.

Price: KeyShot Pro will set you back $99/ month. You can add KeyShotWeb for $39, Network rendering starting at 16 cores for $16, and the NX Plugin for $29 per month. KeyVR will also cost $99/ month.

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Lumion is a 3D rendering software with several LiveSync plugins for popular architectural CAD software. It is a cinch to upload and synchronize your work and begin dressing for a client-ready render. Rendering in real-time using your GPU, Lumion carries an agile and airy feel to its work. Extensive libraries of objects, materials, and foliage are ready for drag-and-drop into your scene, and with it, the possibility to populate a landscape with thousands of assets.

The technicalities of rendering are very much in the background of Lumion, with the creative process for architects and artists to set the scene and mood at the forefront. Animated phasing is an elegant effect that lets you show the step-by-step developments of your scene.

The latest 2023 release improves the rendering engine by combining the existing rasterization approach with the ray tracing technique. Lumion also enhanced the material workflow and converted it to full, physically based rendering. Other notable improvements include subsurface scattering and clearcoat controls.

There are two versions of Lumion: Standard and Pro. The Standard edition contains a limited set of the product’s library of assets, features, and effects, albeit at roughly half the cost of the Pro version.

Price: Both the Standard and Pro version are offered through a one- and three-year license. Standard will be $749 per year and $1,799 for three years. Pro starts at $1,299 per year; for three years, you will need to pay $3,599.

Get it on: Lumion

LuxCoreRender is an unbiased and biased 3D rendering software available under an open-source license. As is often the case for free open-source software, LuxCoreRender can compete with commercial rendering solutions, achieving photorealistic results from a sophisticated toolset.

LuxCoreRender supports complex phenomena like subsurface scattering and volumetrics. To help minimize the overall render time, users can choose to render in biased mode, which favors smart computational shortcuts to avoid precisely calculating every ray of light in a scene (ray-tracing). To the same end, instanced objects may be used in this 3D rendering software. Native plugins for Blender and 3ds Max are useful for those heavily invested in either program – it seems this is where the strength of LuxCoreBlender lies, in its lack of cost and operability with Blender.

Price: Free.

Get it on: LuxCoreRender

Marmoset Toolbag is a Swiss army knife of sorts that can increase productivity for 3D artists. As such, it is not only a bleeding-edge 3D rendering software but also has animation and texture-baking capabilities. Because every change is displayed in real-time, setting up scenes in Marmoset Toolbag can be done very quickly.

Moreover, it has a modular material editor that allows artists to create new textures using drag-and-drop. The built-in skin shader features sophisticated translucency options. Most importantly, Toolbag can create physically accurate renders that can be used for promotional campaigns. This 3D rendering software is handy for game developers since it integrates well with popular game engines like Unity and Unreal Engine.

If you want to showcase your skills, you don’t have to limit yourself to rendered images and movies. You can export your projects to Toolbag Viewer and let web users experience them in high quality on their computers. This feature is perfect for creating portfolios.

Its integration with game engines makes Marmoset Toolbag one of the best 3D rendering software for game developers.

Price: Individual prices start at $15.99/ month for a subscription and $319 for a perpetual license. Studio subscriptions are $43.99 per monthly seat and $879 for a perpetual license.

Get it on: Marmoset Toolbag

Maxwell is an unbiased 3D rendering software that is especially well suited to the requirements of architectural visualization. It combines a high degree of realism with an easy-to-grasp workflow. Its developer, Next Limit, greatly emphasizes Maxwell’s lighting abilities. The Multilight feature lets you capture multiple lighting intensities and colors from a single render. The implication is that you can continue to experiment with your lighting post-render and instantly access the results of your change without having to re-render the scene.

Deep camera settings give you precise control over the look of your render, with volumetric and large-scale scenery tools such as ocean generation and individual grass detailing, making Maxwell particularly suited to architectural visualization, in addition to rich material control for products, jewelry, and the like.

Price: The Maxwell integration plugins cost $595, but a Maxwell Bundle, including all integrations and Maxwell Studio, can also be purchased for $845.

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Used by digital artist and NFT pioneer Beeple for many of his Everydays, Octane is an unbiased GPU-accelerated renderer favored for its speed.

Broad compatibility with most popular 3D modeling programs gives it great versatility, as does its acceptance of Alembic imports, the open shading language (OSL), and volume database (VDB) file standards.

Photorealism is achieved through advanced camera and lighting tools, including subsurface scattering, volumetrics, AI-driven denoising, and countless others.

Despite the potentially heavy workloads, Octane gives a live preview of the rendered scene in your working viewport, granting agility to your workflow and encouraging experimentation.

Price: You can get OctaneRender for ~$26 (€23.95)/ month or ~$265 (€239.88)/ year.

Get it on: Otoy

Redshift is a biased 3D rendering software that is based on GPU acceleration: It was used on high-profile projects, including cinematics for the hit video games Overwatch and The Lego Movie. Redshift uses physically based materials that are compatible with workflows like Unreal Engine. Also, users can rely on a series of dedicated shaders for skin and hair.

The lighting system is highly flexible and realistic, with image-based environment textures providing light for entire scenes and volumetric lighting to create dramatic effects. Speaking of which, Redshift’s support of volumetrics is based on OpenVDB rendering. To add realism, physical lens effects like ISO, shutter, and color balance can be used to discern control over the rendered image. AOVs can be efficiently composited thanks to this 3D rendering software’s support of OpenExr.

Price: Being part of the Maxon software ecosystem, Redshift can be purchased as a standalone program at $45/ month or $264/ year, or as part of the Maxon One bundle. This plan will set you back $149/ month or $1199/ year and includes Maxon’s other highly popular 3D modeling software like Cinema 4D, Red Giant, and ZBrush.

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If you have seen any Pixar movie, you’ve already witnessed the power of its homegrown 3D rendering software, RenderMan. Pixar famously pioneered many animation and workflow techniques that are now standard industry practice. For example, RenderMan was the first to include multi-bounce ray-traced global illumination.

One of the more recent additions to this 3D rendering software is a denoiser that operates with state-of-the-art machine learning, capable of removing noise with much lower average sample counts. Disney’s XPU hybrid renderer has also seen further advancements regarding XPU volumes, volume aggregates, outputs, and enhanced camera effects, among others.

Being the internal tool benefitting from regular live use in multi-million dollar budget productions, it’s no surprise to see Renderman as one of the big names on this list. Interoperability with a wide array of production pipeline tools means it can fit into any team’s processes and render management (it’s used for huge movies, after all) via the complimentary Tractor network rendering tool (compatibility with major farms is also an option), making RenderMan a fantastic professional choice.

Price: $595 for a perpetual license and $250 for an annual maintenance renewal.

Get it on: Pixar

Renderings are not only used for creating stunning visual effects but can also create an emotional response from prospective customers and stakeholders of engineering projects, which is just a fancy way of saying pretty product images. Solidworks Visualize is tailored to this particular segment of the 3D rendering software market, partly by being the native rendering solution for countless products and parts designed in the Solidworks CAD suite. Solidworks Visualize also supports CAD data from the likes of Rhino, SketchUp, and others, so you’re not locked in.

Solidworks Visualize comes in a Standard and Professional package. The latter enables animation, VR content creation, an integrated physics engine, and a vehicle driving simulator.

At its heart, it is an unbiased 3D rendering software that offers an instant progressive preview. It can output multiple render passes, which is handy when you need to composite complex effects. The intuitive interface of Solidworks Visualize enables even non-specialists to create photorealistic renders of their products that can be used in marketing campaigns. Additionally, it provides tools that facilitate the animation and scene setup of mechanical parts.

A seat for Solidworks Visualize is included with every license of Solidworks, but it can also be purchased as a standalone application.

Price: Upon request.

Get it on: Dassault Systèmes

Thea Render is a biased and unbiased 3D rendering software that can take advantage of modern multicore systems, spreading the workload over GPU and CPU for fast results. Accordingly, the program features interactive rendering inside its viewport. This makes quick tweaks and previewing very convenient.

A standout feature is the inclusion of three distinct engines that operate within the same framework. This way, the appropriate tool can be selected based on the job’s requirements without the need to purchase a new product.

A wide selection of material libraries and model assets that can be instanced for fast density in your scenes are two useful additions in this technically advanced tool.

A seat for Solidworks Visualize is included with every license of Solidworks, but it can also be purchased as a standalone application.

Price: Thea Render for Rhino and Sketchup each cost $280 per year or $675 every three years.

Get it on: Altair

V-Ray is considered one of the best 3D rendering software on the market, boasting high-speed, high-quality renders. Under the hood, V-Ray is a biased ray tracer that can harness both a CPU and a GPU (RT) for brute force and path tracing calculations. You can find it integrated into a vast array of 3D modeling suites.

On the one hand, this 3D rendering software is accessible enough that individual artists and the occasional 3D modeler can get great results. On the other hand, V-Ray also has a comprehensive feature set that professional teams can achieve fantastic quality with. However, if you are aiming to push the envelope, success won’t come quickly with V-Ray since the advanced features have a steep learning curve.

Recent releases of V-Ray’s integrations widen the app’s operability with other modeling tools in the production pipeline with compatibility of Pixar’s universal scene description (USD) standard. Each integration also plays nicely with other plugins in the native modeling software, making V-Ray a truly integrated part of any designer’s workflow.

Price: V-Ray Solo: $77.90/ month or $466.80/ year. V-Ray Premium: $114.90/ month or $694.80/ year. V-Ray Enterprise: $49.90/ month and license

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There are two principal rendering methods. Each has its advantages and disadvantages for different applications.

Rendering Method: Rasterization

Rasterization is the standard for real-time graphics, such as computer games. This 3D rendering technology is suited for this task as it balances real-time performance with an acceptable level of quality.

The downside is that this method cannot cope well with complex lighting conditions.

Several techniques have been developed over the years to work around this constraint. For example, “baking” the lighting into the texture reduces strain on rendering power.

Rendering Method: Ray Tracing

Many technologies in this list of 3D rendering software belong to the ray tracing branch of the 3D rendering realm. Raytracing yields a higher degree of quality than rasterization. This process attempts to recreate the path of light rays in a scene, including bouncing off objects, materials, and other variables. The key is tracing every ray of light that hits the virtual camera’s lens back to its source. This approach includes complex calculations that enable even photorealistic images using reflections and refractions. It is commonly used for animated movies and visual effects.

However, this approach to rendering requires higher processing power. Until recently, it was not an option in real-time applications such as video gaming. However, recent developments in graphical processing have triggered a shift, facilitating real-time photorealistic graphics. A closely linked method to ray tracing is “radiosity,” which calculates the spreading and diffusion of light.

Another important term you should look out for is physically based rendering (PBR). It designates a shader method that emulates the physical properties found in real-world materials, such as specularity or refraction. Some consider energy conservation the most crucial factor. It means that an object cannot reflect more light than it receives.

When browsing for 3D rendering software, you will encounter two recurring terms rarely explained: biased and unbiased rendering.

Unbiased Rendering

Unbiased 3D rendering software attempts to calculate physically accurate images. That means they mathematically trace back the path of a light ray correctly without taking any shortcuts. This method can result in longer render times and be demanding on your hardware, but it yields the most “correct” render at the end. Unbiased rendering is rarely used for large, prestigious projects like animated movies. Instead, it is found in graphic design and architectural visualization since render time doesn’t impact the project’s schedule much.

Biased rendering

Biased 3D rendering software, in turn, is developed for efficiency. When calculating the paths of light rays, they strategically “cheat” to cut down the render time. Specifically, this can mean they interpolate between frames, apply the blur, and deploy algorithms ahead of the render, taking educated guesses at the result without actually tracing every ray’s path, as in unbiased rendering using ray tracing. It takes some expertise to fine-tune a biased renderer to produce a convincing result, but some tools listed above close the gap. On large-scale animation or special effects projects, biased rendering is often the efficient choice regarding money and time saved.