Global Illumination Renders.

The past couple of days I've been playing around with rendering & got to rendering with Global Illumination & Ambient Occlusion. I was pretty familiar with both rendering techniques before learning C4D with Maya but find it much easier to set up & play around with in Cinema 4D. The renders can get a bit lengthy with Global Illumination, got to around 15 minutes once I started to bring up the sampling & the diffuse depth. I kind of grabbed the concept from Nick Campbell's tutorial with GI with the Light Bars(Poles?).
I needed to bring up the sample rate so the render doesn't look as dirty but for the most part I'm getting the hang of it with the different options with the GI interface on C4D. As well as the shadows are a bit too dark so I have to figure it out.

Also a technique I've learned about was shadow casting. Basically creating a light in C4D, instead of having a object illuminate the scene, & it having casting shadows upon objects but not casting light. This technique helps because the shadows that illuminated objects cast don't have that strong of a shadow but lights in C4D do but sometimes over light the scene but make out for some good deep shadows.

Hopefully I can get some test animations done by tomorrow if I have time. If not then early next week. Need to get some C4D stuff on my reel.