Hey everyone, I’m not exactly new here since I’ve used these forums to answer my questions about Blender and Rendering but now I have one I can’t seem to find the answer to:
Why are all external renderers (besides Yaf(a)ray) all scripts based with no graphical interface and decimal sliders to make rendering alot easier for an artist who wants to just render a photorealistic scene without having to learn all this script and custom shader stuff?
Have you looked at Luxrender? It’s one of the easier renderers to use because it comes with so many presets. Check it out at luxrender.net. It is about as photorealistic as you can get. Mind you, these are just my opinions, not absolutes.
Cheers and God bless.
thanks pal 
It’s not the presets I’m after though, I’ve had years experience using Maya, 3ds max, zbrush etc… I’m using blender so I can go commertial and launch a portfolio of everything I know in hopes to get a job in 3D graphics and Animation. Anyway, in Maya theres an attributes window which allows you to tweek with sliders, digits and tick boxes enabeling me to render my scene just as I fancy but with these externel renderers there is no interface, just lots of folders and files and a help file which assumes I know how to use DOS. I’ve currently got POV-ray, Gelato, Pixie… and have no idea (even after reading their help files. I cant even find a site or forum which tells me how to get it set-up and sterted ready to render my scene) how to use them.
My apologies to any grammar nazis on this site 
EDIT: heh, Luxrender seems to do the job 
I like the interface -nice and simple but complex when you want it to be- Thanks a bunch for this Pompey, you’re a life saver.