Software for simple, fast, excellent boat renderings?

Blender is one of, if not the most, developed production graphics tool for free out there. They have a very active dev community. Personally, I get a brain seisure attempting to navigate all the buttons and dohicky's. But because its meant from the ground up for more than just rendering, it has a fairly deep toolset hiearchy. The GUI reflects that capability, so if one gets over the sensory overload ,its a serious tool. As the kid's say, it's quite the s**t.

But developing a boat, I would emphasis to my understanding, starts with design and engineering. So Freeship, Hullform, Carlson Hull, are where the designer makes his design statement, the first bold step..

The art director does his/her part to sell the fantasy. Division of labor let's you get home in time for dinner.

 

Some great examples of full on yacht rendering eye candy....
http://www.boatdesign.net/forums/showthread.php?t=18823

Good indepth discusion on what's goes into all that hard work.

Cheer,
Bob