I was testing some techniques for making interesting panels for a project and came up with this so far. Lots of time consuming gadgets used on this one it took over an hour to render 
This is a joke, right?
Funny, yes. Joke, no. It is as I said it was. I wasn’t trying to optimize the settings I was just free styling with materials to see what I’d get and I thought it was interesting the result in comparison to the render time. I’m running a e6600. Go ahead and try some yourself and post what you get, I’m curious what you other felles can come up with.
But try what? are there lights here or is it all procedurals? What kind of mesh should I use? I think Roofoo is confused as I am, about the complexity of the scene.
O, I didn’t realize I was being confusing. I just made a couple 3 dimensional panels and applied some properties to them like refraction, SSS, subsurf level 5 etc. to see what kind of cool effects I could come up with. I was trying for a translucent glowy look. My particular scene has one light, and uses AO and a backdrop. I guess complexity wise it isn’t that impressive but apparently it was enough to keep my computer busy for an hour 8 ) I was just interested in what kinds of panels and effects people could come up with since it is simple to model and most of the effect is in the material and lighting.
Jaguarandi’s project which is revamping and optimizing the raytracer (he’s currently on a camping trip), will pretty much solve part of the rendertime problem, it’s a cool effect though.
Does look cool, I wondered if they were objects or holes in a wall.