You could try http://www.kerkythea.net/joomla/ - it's a free renderer that, once you get your head around the material creation, is very good. It supports lots of different types of rendering.
It can import .obj files, or you can download a python script to export out from blender, or download a version of blender which integrates Kerkythea inside blender.
For those who think Bender it's not a great free software, take a look at Blender Nation http://www.blendernation.com/ or download some of the Blender Magazines http://blenderart.org/download.html ... After seeing what Blender can do, then come here and tell us "how it sucks".
A tool is as good as it's user. The stuff I see here is getting pretty good, if people continue to learn and improve it can probably get on par with renders from 3DS and the likes.
EDIT: i'm now rendering whith indigo, and you know that the image, at the beginning, is not very clean...but should i already see textures? Because the body is still black, but the interior is already textured, if i'm seeing right. If i try with the blender internla render engine the body has it's texture....
That's what i got with Indigo: if i turn Ray mirror on, the body is black (probably because there is no background), if i don't it simply is without textures...i tried with jpg, tga and png textures...
Unless it has changed since I last used it, you need to just assign material names in blender, and then edit the materials (textures etc) using the indigo exporter.
Indigo is powerful and doesn't need very much parameter but is tricky to use. There are different material managements depending on the exporter you are using. The best thing to do is to learn how to use it and ask your questions directly in the dedicated forums.
I like Indigo but the material creation for it takes me so much time that I never succeeded to finalize a render with Indigo..
Hm, now if i try to export to indigo, it's dos like window appears, does something (fast) and then indigo is closed...hmm. I'll try to do everything all over (again)...
Ok, I followed the tutorial word-for-word, but my car comes out all black and white, with no textures at all! The textures do show up in the preview window in blender. Any idea what I've missed? Perhaps it could be something to do with the layers?
Can anyone help me? Thanks, ted209.
PS Fixed it!! Yafray doesn't like .png texture files.
Does anyone have a copy of the .rar files pack from earlier links, I can't seem to get that download to work off of the link. The one with all the converted cmx in it all ready. My script .py file isnt working with the version of blender that i'm trying to use. I have signed up on that web site too but when I try to download it, I just get page cannot be displayed...
Thanks.
Once I have those I can try out this awesome tutorial.