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There are several solutions for rendering CAD models in various formats. Maya certainly is one, but not the easiest to learn and use let alone the cheapest.
I like Carrara Pro, especially with it's CADstyle importer.
It's a totally different price range, and it may just be what you want price-wise perhaps but more significantly in terms of ease of use.
Note that CADstyle handles several CAD formats, such as IGES, OpenNURBS, STEP, VDAfs, Step, STL.... but not native Pro-E. But if you can save your Pro-E scene to some of these standard exchange formats you'll be fine. ou might even consider an expert conversion tool that costs several hundreds of dollars, and still save lots.
Carrara emerged from what used to be known as the most popular entry level 3D program, RayDream. It's come a long way. Don't let its reasonable price fool you, there is a tremendous amunt of power packed in it, and the scene browser makes it great to select from pre-set lighting conditions for product displays, packaging and such. It also comes with many models included, so for example if you design furniture or appliances you don't have to also re-invent the wheel by designing the room for showing your designs with, there's much pre-fabs to choose from.
Quite often, the CAD will be done in Engineering on workstation configurations of PCs, while Marketing has their Macs and they want to use a 3D rendering/animation tool that can work on either. Carrara does well there too.
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