Great image.

Theres no doubt that maxwell gives superb renders with great ease of set up, but it takes far too long, especially if doing stuff like you do Dave (Movies), For stills I can see why it would be an option.

I think that some good tutorials using mental ray and a bit of a play about to get it set in your head you will get a similar result with a great time saving.

I've just got the free trial of Realflow 4, the only problem is that there isnt a plug in for maya 8.5 yet!