What's the preferred renderer to use with Wings3D these days?

[micheus]

To render simple scenes I still prefer to use POV-Ray or Kerkythea. They are fast!

ekolis, to explore Kerkythea you should use its own IDE. So, export your scene from Wings3D, start the Kerkythea application and load your scene. You will be able to set many parameters to your materials. Also, there are a lot of material presets you can add to its library (check the material resources for download). If you have a 64bits system, install the Kerkythea Echo Boost.

... and yes, POV-Ray can generate transparent background. Unfortunately not using the W3D plugin (not yet). Export your scene, open it in the POV-Ray IDE. Find the background declaration and add the alpha component. Then, in the text edit box (right to the AA list box) enter the command line parameter Output_Alpha=true. (check here for more options).

By using other apps between W3d - Render
An option is DAZ3D (free) which you can import an .obj file and use 3DLight render (that is a faster render). The current DAZ3D also offers the iRay by NVidia - good if you have NVidia videocards, otherwise it uses the CPU. DAZ users are getting excellent renders with it. If you like LuxRender (free) the cheaper way to use it (I found) is buying the Reality 4 plugin for DAZ3D ($29.95). Both, IRay and LuxRender are photorealistic renders and they can take hours give you a acceptable image.