I've been getting more and more of my "official" legos put into MLCad format. I'm then doing 4 views of the scene rendered in Pov-Ray. Most of the final detail renders in 720p resolution with high anti-aliasing and two-pass radiosity settings are taking just about 46 hours for each image. I'm really not happy with the anti-aliasing in Pov-Ray, and I may try to render an image at 4x and then anti-alias it down in a post process image tool.One thing that has really made a difference, is lighting. This is a light ray tool, and the importance of good lighting is critical. Doing a two-bounce radiosity also adds a lot to illuminate the model, and the background (namely the sky sphere) makes a HUGE difference on how dark the scene is. A single point light, like the sun, only illuminates so much, and it can tend to glare and shine/reflect off the model surface. But with a blue or grey sky sphere, there is a lot of soft natural light that helps light the model (the difference between a black sky and a blue one is shocking on the render).
I sure hope the great efforts at LDraw.org continue to put out some of the GREAT models for all the lego parts. Without them, making all these great renders would be impossible.
