Altho we don't have those awesome procedurals in Maya plugin, that we can use for MAxwell rendering (maya users have to jump into studio to use those) we do have a bunch of procedurals (very customizable) in Maya itself … and it's awesome and completely limitless.
It would be great if there would be some sort of … I don't know maybe a tiny node editor to mix procedurals … for example to mix brick procedural with noise procedural to make a bit different results … in terms of brightness for a displacement map .. for instance.
For sure procedurals are the future. And it is definitely very handy tool. I missed it a lot when I turned to MAxwell from Mental Ray ..oh by the way have you guys seen Mental Ray's "round corners" I think it could be very handy especially for a hard surface modeling and visualization.
If subdivision is multiplying amount of vertices and makes geometry heavier (even on render time) those "round corners" are super fast and easy solution (for sure will not work good on a close up shots) So it basically adds an illusion of an facet on the edges with the chosen angle (say if the angle of your edge is sharper than 40 degrees - it will add a small facet there) and you can choose the size of it and etc.
Super fast (no extra geometry being created) and super easy (no bothering with subdivision samples etc) I think it would be cool .. especially for architecture stuff.
Let me know if it's a bit confusing and screens will work better
Cheers.