Freestyle isn't a stand-alone app any more. It's been part of Blender for a number of years now. I'm fairly familiar with it as a Blender extension and it's a strange combination of good, bad and downright ugly. Too many people have fiddled with it without (apparently) understanding what the idea of non-realistic rendering and outlining is about or, for that matter, applying their improvements to actual art! This is a classic case of bit-rot and the core of Freestyle is still excellent, if unloved and in need of development and even performance enhancement. The afterthoughts should probably be shut away in a drawer because they simply don't work as advertised and drain time and effort from the artists who be making really great work with it. However, it doesn't deserve comparing with 3D modelling or rendering engines because while it is technically capable of rendering art, it can only "do" line art based on existing models and needs a "proper" rendering engine to do a lot of the heavy lifting.
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Freestyle isn't a stand-alone app any more. It's been part of Blender for a number of years now. I'm fairly familiar with it as a Blender extension and it's a strange combination of good, bad and downright ugly.
Too many people have fiddled with it without (apparently) understanding what the idea of non-realistic rendering and outlining is about or, for that matter, applying their improvements to actual art!
This is a classic case of bit-rot and the core of Freestyle is still excellent, if unloved and in need of development and even performance enhancement. The afterthoughts should probably be shut away in a drawer because they simply don't work as advertised and drain time and effort from the artists who be making really great work with it.
However, it doesn't deserve comparing with 3D modelling or rendering engines because while it is technically capable of rendering art, it can only "do" line art based on existing models and needs a "proper" rendering engine to do a lot of the heavy lifting.