Blender Add-on for Thea Render
Thea Render has released a Blender add-on which provides tight integration into the Blender workflow.
From the announcement:Thea Render is an exceptional quality external rendering solution that is now integrated on Blender as tight as possible. Features such as interactive rendering, materials editing, instancing support make it possible to work inside Blender creating astonishing results with a smooth workflow between Blender and Thea Render. In addition, we have taken the decision to release the plugin under GPL (open source) that, we believe, fits the spirit of Blender development itself.
Link
I used Thea a long time ago when working for a large simulation company. We used it as a way to demo an entire database consisting of anywhere from 1mil to 3mil polygon scenes as a real-time render. Can’t wait to see what it can do now.
Then again I am still getting used to Blender and love cycles, but this may definitely still be a viable rendering alternative, depending on its advantages.
You can never have too many good rendering options, as I like to say.
Agreed!