Keyshot version 4 is due to be released on valentine's day ... If you purchase before then you will get a free upgrade to v4. I love Keyshot, it's fast and easy, but its materials editor is somewhat restrictive, not seen the v4 one but v3 is definitely a pain at times. Also KS supports step files and it works perfectly with what MoI exports out ... Named objects come in as named layers and the style setting comes in as the name given plus rgb colour code. KS does offer animation sets, and if you go the whole hog you will be spending close to the same cost as Maya but just for a render engine ... But oh boy it's a good render engine.

I use Keyshot, so you can hunt through my posts to see the quality of the renders, you may not like my style of rendering, but if you can see past that, you'll see the render engines accuracy, also all the posts i have done here and in the gallery have all been done with the live render engine and are just screenshots and not the full blown renderer

If you don't need animation then you will be close to the expense of Maxwell render.

Hope that helps ...

Martin Spencer-Ford