I was wondering what everyones thoughts were about which external renderer is the best to start out with.
Probably Vray and Mental Ray are the “best”. But there are lots of things to consider. Price, performance, realism, animation, rendering speed. If there truly was a “best” external renderer we would all switch to it and the others would fade away into obscurity. I personally use Octane, Yafaray, Cycles, and BI. I wouldn’t want to give up any one of these engines, as they all have advantages depending on the situation.
Go to the CGTalk gallery, find some images you like, look at the software used, and take your pick.
Related to Blender, vray,no doubt,there is a great connection with it thanks to Andrey M. Izrantsev(of course the render is commercial and you have to buy it).
Mental ray hasn’t a connection with blender,so I don’t think noboy use it with blender.
Also thea render is a really a great engine(the only problem with it is that is a bit too much unbalanced versus unbiased rendering,there is photomapping but some feature doesn’t work as good as with the unbiased engines)
It has a good connection with blender(like vray you have to buy it)
Paper and pencil are pretty good.
<sarcasm>PRMan is best.</sarcasm>
Seriously though, it all depends on what it is you want to render.
The best for what purpose?
There is no the best render engine, all of them have their strong and weak sides, no render engine is good all-round so you better consider what render engine(s) fit your needs for your particular project.
Post on the poll for your opinion.
Well my opinion is that different renderers are good for different things, where’s that option? 
I agree with dsavi. The best renderer is the one which does the job. Try to do a comic style animation with lux. Try to do an animation of realistic water with freestyle. There is no best renderer. Perhaps you could divide the engines in sections.
best unbiased, best biased, etc. then you need to define, what “best” means. Fast render, fast to set up the materials, much features. Otherwise its hard to answer your question.
best regards,
Martin
No because you still don’t understand.
Think about what you want to accomplish in terms of style, from there you can start thinking about what render engine fits the job.
Again, there is no “best” render engine because they are all good for different things, in the same sense we can’t have “favorite” render engines for all uses, we can have favorite render engines for photorealistic rendering and we can have favorite render engines for Pixar-style rendering but not for all purposes.
Decide what style you want and go from there!
Kind of a slanted list don’t you think? Where is 3Delight? Where are all the professional renderers?
Ok look I said your favorite and I didn’t name of all the expensive “professional renderers” so I just said name your favorite and if not then ok.
Then what is the point of making this a useless poll ?
If you want to know what other users like then just make the tiniest bit of effort to use the forum search function. This question has been asked countless countless times ? It doesn’t need to be repeated again with another worthless poll
Ok Im sorry for taking your time I was just trying to get opinions but all I got was criticism and people telling me Im dumb so Im sorry.
Hey kid, don’t worry about it, the old-timers just get tired of seeing the same threads pop up over and over every month, and occasionally we get a bit cranky. The real answer is one that no poll can find- the one that suits YOUR workflow and the way YOU work, or better yet the one your boss tells you to use 
Who cares what everyone else uses? Good artists make good work with every render engine.
And thank you 3dementa, stompinTom, renderdemon, madminstral, dsavi and Martin L and (jay) for usefull info
You’d probably get more useful answers (or at least spark a discussion) if you were more specific. Like this:
“I’m going to produce a 10-minute, 4k animation featuring a mech battle in an urban environment. We’re using Softimage and Blender for assets and Lagoa for physics. Many characters, but no closeups or dialogue. Mostly daylight lighting. 6 months to complete. Small 64-core farm available for rendering, supplemented by cloud rendering if necessary. What renderer do you think is best for such a project?”
Well I am starting to get annoyed now so I am gonna “continue” being rude (sorry in advance)
I am annoyed because I am taking the time to write you advice with the only purpose to help you (twice), time which I could have spent making money, only for you to blatantly ignore everything I wrote just because it didn’t fit the criteria of what you wanted to hear, that is totally disrespectful to me and everyone else who tried to help you so naturally I am going to be angry.
A bit of advice in the future, people here are generally good heartened and will try to help you to the best of their ability if you show respect back to them but if you are just going to ignore the advice you get anyway then do not waste peoples time by creating a thread about it.
If you really want to know the “best” render engine then fine, use Luxrender, boom! All your problems are solved and I am not going to waste more time in this thread, good day.
Ok Ill be more specific next time.