I've been working on creating my own ray tracer and I implemented surface shading using the Phong illumination model. I'm looking to make it look more realistic so I'm looking at different models. Is this what is also used for commercial renderers (i.e., Renderman, Arnold)? Or are there other ones that are used more (Blinn-Phong, Beckman Distribution, etc.)?
Renderman and friends are all programmable renderers, so the user can implement whatever shading model is desired, even using different shading models on different objects in a scene. I wrote one using the modulus operator to simulate a faceted surface where the underlying geometry was smooth, for example. Also, the operation of the rendering model is generally driven by multiple hand-painted or procedurally generated maps, so for example a map could specify a broader specular highlight in one area, and narrower in another.
That said, Lambert diffuse shading with Phong specular shading is the basic starting point.