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A shot in the dark here, but an idea popped into my head on improving the ability to create high quality photo-realistic renders more easily using Maxwell's unbiased render technology, especially for newer users to Maxwell. I've had most success when using photos/HDRI's for the scene lighting as it seems to produce a more realistic image and subtle lighting effects.
Is it possible that Next Limit's R&D dept. could develop a sort of AI Auto-Render where a user inputs a photo or several photos/HDRI's then Maxwell's AI Auto Render scans the image(s) and automatically adjusts the relevant settings to create a render? The settings can still be adjusted manually as currently exists allowing further tweaking to suit individual needs. This auto-pilot approach would get most users to a higher level of rendering within Maxwell and would also 'teach' each user what the optimum settings are to create a high quality photo realistic image. The idea could be similar to how photogammetry works which uses multiple photos to create a 3D model, except in this scenario, it's used to pre-set the lighting values averaged from scanning the photo(s).
The other wishlist list is to bundle a series of quality pre-tested HDRI images of various lighting scenes and moods that can readily be imported for rending for the various end user industries - architecture & design, industrial, product, landscape etc.

Hi Mark!

Interesting ideas. I started writing a tutorial on IBL (HDRI) lighting this morning. Given one of your ideas, I think I'll include a small set of HDRI's in tht tutorial. Not just random selections though. A few that have specific purposes - different times of day, interior and exterior, ... the kind of HDRI's that should help a person select their own types. I may have to seek permission to include some of these, so there might be a delay in my publishing the tut here. Wonder whatever happened to the proposal to create a thread catagory to house tutorials.......

While using spherical HDR images for lighting the scene and obtaining reflections, or for backplate and outdoor rendering, is useful, I find that using traditional photo studio set-ups with emitters (the emitters using high quality HDR images of photo studio light sources) has benefits, too. The main benefit being interactively positioning the emitters and changing their looks on the fly, the other being that with multiple emitters one can easily finetune the lighting in Multilight without having to re-render, which is a massive time-saver.

That said, most commercially available spherical HDR images are for "archviz" and good ones for product photography are hard to find. This is why the Keyshot HRDI editor and photo studio presets excel, particularly for the novice/student who these days wants it easy. The large number of, uh, tutorial videos and a busy forum also help to win users

Andreas, you might want to take a look at an application called "HDRI Light Studio". (https://www.lightmap.co.uk/)

While I would not call the owner/chief developer a particular "personable" guy, the product is quite good - primarily used for studio lighting setups. I worked with it for about a year within Maxwell Render. It has a ton of pre-existing setups, but also a ton of various kinds of lights and gobos that one can use to create a very sophisticated lighting setup. Is very good in allowing you to cast light on specific areas of specific kinds of products - highlighting them without being obvious about it. After the setup is formed to your satisfaction, you save the result as a re-usuable HDRI file. And then use the HDRI in the normal manner.

One good use I made of it was to build a lighting and shadowing arrangement specifically to display some individual characters I made (ancient Persian warriors, actually). Getting good lighting on facial features, hair and helmets without overpowering everything else is quite tricky. Then, when I had the HDRI I wanted, I put it in Maxwell's "illumination" slot. For the background, reflection and refraction slots, I used another HDRI that provided a good afternoon "courtyard scene." Worked quite well and didn't create many blending issues at all - two HDRI's - one for outdoor features (as you say,) and one to illuminate the features of my seven or eight characters. Sold a bunch of those characters as a result.