... I have not tried out Vray though - I thought MentalRay was the best.... Dan Shhhh, *looks around* those words have started many a flame war. On a serious note, I think the main gripe people have with Mental Ray is that it's not meshed into Maya as well as it could so there are user friendliness issues like: - Having to find work arounds (linear lighting, passes, animated proxies etc) - clutter and cryptic descriptions (has anyone successfully used the "mib_color_spread"?) - Lots of controls the user must carefully balance or there's a high chance you're getting an ugly image that took forever to render. (photon intensity independent of the light's intensity? Blotchy, creepy crawly Final Gathering even on high settings? What?) Once you get the hang of it, it is indeed very powerful, even if it makes you want to punch a baby once in a while. ___________________ @ anthony77 You can get a pretty nice machine for that kind of money . Is there any particular brand that you're looking at?