I like the way you set up the lighting in Maxwell (looking at Joopsons Pics) as i've done a bit on light specs so that makes sense to me.

I think that the rendering times compared to the image quality of Indigo is pretty poor (compared to MR, Renderman etc) , BUT it does look like it's able to produce good results if you've got the time, and the big bonus is that its free.

As your doing a raytracing program Matt, its worth you looking into everything and having the knowlage of the interface, method's, quality etc under your belt as it will only make your's better in the long run.