Yes, I really liked how vray modeled our character and settings, generated all our materials, UV mapped everything, rigged the model, placed the lights, wrote the music, animated the scene, made HDRI maps and even did the video editing for us!
/sarcasm off...
Mental ray is just as capable as any renderer - theres a reason its bundled with 3dsmax. Everyone had access to it. However, in the end, the renderer is only as good as the artist. From what I've seen, several teams had some VERY impressive results with just the scanline renderer
. Another team had great results with Brazil at our regional - but that did not get them the award...