[Brian Yip]

I agree with all the points Lev stated and they are very clear.

I just have two comments:

Make sure everyone in your team works!!!! It's very darn hard for a few people to finish the project unless they are extremely skilled.
Second: Light tracer is good only for outdoor scenes. But you also have to keep in mind that if you have tons of polygons in a scene, try your best to fake a light tracer. It takes some time to setup, but it will definitely save your rendering time.
Light tracer is an awesome lighting, but don't overuse it. It will make the scene dull. Takes a long time to render too.

If you have a super fast computer, you can try radiosity for indoor scenes. It gives you beautiful results. However, if you have a slow computer, scratch radiosity off your head. Cos you can just fake it by adding more basic lights in.

For advance lighting, I recommend animators to really sit down and understand what those options do in your scenes. Once you know how they work, you can think of ways to solve your time problem.


Brian


p.s. for modelling, try using splines instead of NURBS. NURBS is great, but it creates high polygon objects that might take you time for rendering.