People argue that you only get what you pay for, implying that free software is somehow defective. However, that couldn't be further from the truth. The reality is that companies that produce paid-for programs have serious concerns about the longevity of their companies with their current business models.
Comparing their own limited teams of programmers who are doing it for the money and know in the back of their minds that they will never be recognised for their work, they are up against the rest of the world, a vast army of programmers who can discuss openly any problems they might have encountered and how best to solve them, programmers who know that their work can be inspected by anybody and therefore they should make a good job if it, programmers who are doing it for the love of it.
Blender is one of the image processing programs that I use occasionally so I wouldn't call myself an expert on the details of its workings, however, even though I probably only use a tiny fraction of its capabilities, it does produce good results and being free, I'm not paying for things I will probably never use.
I mainly mess around with Indian fonts so here is the word ਗੁਰਮੁਖੀ (Gurmukhi) as a large block of glass (the green tint in real glass is caused by the iron content of the sand, so I am told).
Simple, good enough for anybody to use with their name instead, as the background for their computer desktop.
Just like this.
This is 'Gurmukhi' close up and you can see how fascinating ray-tracing is in the detail that is available - this is with just a plain texture...
...and this is with a slight dimple, just enough to make it a little more uneven and life-like.
This has a slightly deeper texture and more complex lighting. Whilst the examples here are fairly basic, they do show you that he program is a capable one and the rendering on it is is excellent.
This shows you an advantage of using 3D modelling, as opposed to normal 2D image manipulation. Simply put, you can move the camera around so that it records images that your left and right eyes would receive, automatically incorporating the differences in lighting, reflections, parallax and so on.
Cross your eyes so that the lettering or the pipe overlap and enjoy the 3D that you get when each of your eyes gets a different image.
