Brazil VS Mental Ray

[nano22]

Hello,
I know this aint much a zbrush problem, but i had no where else to go and its somewhat conected to zbrush...
Im making a Human head, and i made all the maps...
But now im strugeling with the renderer and the material...
So, witch renderer should i use?

This is a "try" with brazil

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii252/Marko2099/TEST3.jpg

And now since everybody is making skin with mental ray i starded learning it to, and made this...

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii252/Marko2099/Testinternet.jpg

But! im having issues as you can see and im not happy with the results...
1) What renderer should i use, and is best for skin?
2) How can i increase the intensity of my mental ray sss fast skin diffuse texture, couse its barely visible, and thats one of the problems...
3) How can i set up the Normal map for mental ray sss fast skin? i placed Normal bump in the bump slot and put in normal the normal map, and in bump the bump map(witch is not the issue), but the normal map is invisible -_-'
4)Tips and tricks :D

Oh, and im a 3ds Max 2009 user and made bump and normal with zbrush...

Thx and please help...

[dustinbrown]

Use what you're comfortable using. Both are very capable renderers.

[petekasim]

Ah, yes. mentalray sss, I used it a bit some time ago, but the details escape me.

I used the Digital Tutors Skin tutorial DVD to gt me going. It costs money but is very thorough. mentalray skin is as good as any other out there, you just need to tinker with the settings to achieve the desired results.

And yeah, I remember the normal mapping is handled differently to the default renderer, although again I forget what needs to be plugged in where exactly.

Sorry I can't be of more help right now, but like I said, Digital Tutors covered the topic very well indeed