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I'm sure people have done this before, but I found a way to make your 3D models look great without pixel shaders! All you do is export them as a 2D image with very high resoultion (2560 x 1920) and preview it in windows picture and fax viewer. Press the print screen button (prt scr next to scroll lock) while in the viewer. Go into paint and press ctrl v and crop the image. Do this as many times as needed. The renders usually look awesome for me.

The rendering method from your 3d package will also dictate the quality.
In Maya, you can use software or hardware rendering, as well as mental ray.
Similar aspects with 3d studio max.
At the end of the day however its the rendering process that will show you the best results.

mental ray is the bad boy of the render packages but its quite accessible for bedroom bangers as well.
It has a slew of products its used with.
http://www.mentalimages.com/4_1_motion_pictures/index.html

Generally you can get awesome results in your 3D renderer with out Pixel Shaders etc. Because that's all relatively new graphics card technology and as you should know there have been awesome 3D renders since the days of the Amiga when Cinema 4D, Lightwave and a few other apps were released for the first time. As indi pointed out, Mental ray is a great renderer, it comes standard with 3DS Max, Maya and Softimage|XSI (Softimage being the cheapest option) you can also buy Pixar's Renderman for those 3 applications as well, you can also get vray for those three and TrueSpace 7, you don't need a still render and a 2D application to get a good render result, although people do touch up their work in Photoshop for a better result, but look at some of the renderers you can play with and the renderers that comes with 3D applications, you can do a lot.

I know, I'm just giving tips to people with low quality programs (usually freeware programs). The reason is, you can get excellent renders in just 640 x 480 format.