In terms of physically-based truthfulnesss, I kind of cheated; the lights you can see are smaller than the ones that are functionally there, casting light into the scene (and, in fact, reflecting in Olimar's helmet--notice the bright patch...). While this did make the image brighter, the fact that I had to cheat the brightness may mean the image needs some fundamental reworking before it's truly presentable.
Unfortunately, I also bypassed the post-post-processing (GIMP touchup), so the really interesting
parts of the picture (the Pikmin in the foreground) are actually darker and harder to see than they were before. The shadows on their heads are softer than they were, as well. A real shame, because the Pikmin were the best/funniest part...
Tech specs are identical to last time, except that I could get a decently clean (read: noise-free) image at fewer samples (100 rather than 2000), and therefore cut the time spent on a single render down from ~10-22 hours to ~33 1/2 minutes (and that's with the time spent rendering the Pikmin and the Waterwraith on a separate layer from Olimar and the scenery!).
A third version may be in order; that water doesn't quite make realistic sense, and I did make a new-and-improved version of the Pikmin model anyway....
