Caly, I'm not sure what you mean by 3ds Max being "rigid", but what Stewer and myself were discussing is that the rendering plugins for Max (Brazil, Vray, etc.) are specifically programmed for Max, and can't be easily customized to work in a render farm that uses it's own custom software or workflow like Mental Ray or PRMan can. Carrara is very limited in the sense that it can only use the Phong shader for your materials (more high end software makes use of MANY different shader types like, Oren-Nayar-Blinn, regular Blinn, Phong, Metal, Aniostrophic (sp?), which all give you more flexibility in the way your materials react to light, shadows, and color diffuse. Max and Maya (Lightwave as well I believe) both allow you to use different brands of renderers, not just the default. The new version of Max comes with Mental Ray built in, but you can still use Brazil or Vray as well if you want. This is somthing you can't do in Daz Studio or Poser or many of the other lower end software. But what stewer pointed out, and is true, is that the renderers built into Poser, and now Daz, can do some great things if used properly (but are often NOT used correctly by the general user). They don't do GI or caustics, which is a let down in my book, but as Stewer pointed out, these things CAN be faked with some effort and creativity to a convincing degree. Cinema has a good renderer built in, but seems to be missing some things like micropoly displacement, which Firefly for poser actually does have, and it's also available in Vray for Max. I don't have Cinema, but it seems speed and flexability would keep it from competing with more higher end raytrace engines. That's an overview in a nutshell. It would take FOREVER to point out every difference of every renderer out there, and a whole seperate forum to devote to it.