Quote - I started using Mental Ray in VIZ, AND I HATE VIZ WITH A PASSION... but at least it's fairly stable, eventhough Viz is soooo overly complicated to use.  I would get MAX 8 and the VUE xStream plugin... THAT'S THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS- render to 60 computers at once with MAX and Backburner, but get MENTAL RAY realism.  Unfortunately, they don't have xStream for VUE and VIZ 6 yet... so I'm stuck with one or the other.

Well obviously you haven't seen the xStream forums.  It's LITTERED with bugs and crashes and will not work with VRay.  HORRID decision as over half of Max users have and use VRay.

-Ryan Spaulding
 VueRealism.Com