To start with, Cycles should have at least some capability to handle a type of soft box; I don’t see why not. The feature list for Rhino WIP/9 Beta is here,:
Regarding soft boxes, I could also recommend bella render, for a specific reason, just because I recently happened to make an attempt at an open-soruce studio for bella, based on automotive.
A softbox light is on my list of things to implement. As bella is real and spectral, I find it reasonably easy to implement real settings for lighting. Anyway, as an example, I dumped some pillows made using the excellent script here into a Rhino scene, and then further shoehorned it into the existing open-source automotive studio. This is about 5-10 minutes worth of assembly and work. Feel free to send a message if you are interested. I am of course not offended if not!
I’m sure it is absolutely worth having a go in Cycles first. My only note for Rhino WIP is that the Cycles version they progressed has already been rolled back for whatever reason. So the list of new features seems relatively small overall.
I am sorry to hear that Cycles is not getting love anymore.
I have heard Bella renderer many years ago but never took a change. I can try it but how many trial days does the Bella offer?
Cycles isn’t my favourite, as I have discussed elsewhere, but it can do that. You just need good enough textures and a good enough HDR for lighting, or brute-force light obects.
I think with some good effort, Cycles in Rhino 8 can get about here. The problem will be the depth.
Bella is a perpetual license, it has no subscription. The trial phase is basically infinite, with a watermark at 1080p fixed.
I think you should try and get to that stage with Rhino 8 first, before spending any money. The issue Cycles has is how well it can interpret textures. But loads of people have had good success with it.
EDIT: This is how Cycles produces, again, without much effort. I don’t think you need to spend money, and certainly don’t subscribe your life away for this type of rendering.
