Here is a project that I just finished trying to simulate reality as close to a photograph as possible. I took a cologne bottle cap and tried to frame it in an interesting compositing using my average digital camera. Then I took a photo of a chrome ball to simulate the reflections in the metal. I rendered the object in different passes: diffuse, shadow, occlusion1, occlusion2, reflection, and specularity and composited them in Shake. It first time using the software and I have pretty much got the hang of it in a couple of days because it is similar to the material editor in Unreal :) combined with the layers in Photoshop. Try and see if you can spot the CG clone.
Jonathan
