[Matt Hallock]

If it was last year, I would have not used Brazil because Mental Ray was not a part of 3DSMAX yet. However, this year, everyone is afforded the same opportunities rendering wise. Enabling just the global illumination does crap to make your scene look realistic. The GI skylight creates quick lighting, and on this years animation I'm not even using it, I'm using it for bucket rendering speed wise.

I would agree that a 3rd party renderer would be considered cheating if people didn't have Mental Ray, but global illumination is just as good in Mental Ray as it is in Brazil or Final Render. It definately does matter how what materials you have, I'll post an example later.