i dont want to spoil you experience with mr, but you are a bit unfair to the maya renderer. yes, it has limitations, yes it could be better. but still, there is a lot you can do with the maya renderer - you just need to master its settings. and my opinion is, if you have to rely on mr to make your pictures any good, then aehm, you should go back to learning how to make the scene in a way that it does look great with maya renderer. if it then would look better in mr, good for you. but mr cannot compensate a poor scene