Hi Tony. If you were thinking of Maxwell, consider Fryrender instead. It is an unbiased engine and reportedly faster than Maxwell. They claim it is fast enough to do animation. Also it will be coupled with their new real-time engine, and they just announced the addition of a very good toon rendering core. the price right now is about $540 US, but will jump to around $1080 when v1 is released (expected VERY soon). but they have cut off the beta trials now, so you'd have to buy it untested. Many people seem to like it though. And the renders look great. But i'm not sure if it's a stand-alone engine or requires a plug-in to certain programs. Currently supported are Rhino, Max, Maya, C4D, and Lightwave..
Also, on the Modo front - any purchase of 203 now includes 301 upgrade. And they expect to release during this summer. the overall feeling is it might be just after Siggraph. that would give you enough time to play with 203 demo now and see if you like it or not. But it's not a major risk to wait for the 301 demo, if the price jumps at all i expect it will not be a huge increase...
I wanted to start using Fryrender beta yesterday, but then found out the beta period is expired
. But no worries, now i have a very good reason to start using Modo's renderer
...
shorty