At the moment, an AO render of each set is about forty-five minutes. Of course, there are no textures or lights, etc, so that number may go up. Also, I'm running a 32bit OS...when I get to rendering, I'll be running a 64bit OS, so that will cut some of the time down. However, the background is only going to be rendered once per angle with anything that is animated being rendered separately and composited onto it...which will cut the overall render time down considerably.
You'll be surprised at how much of this detail doesn't show up in the final animations, Matt...at least in the first one. The idea is that these sets will be used multiple times. I'm leaving myself as much latitude as possible so that there aren't limitations on the camera angles I can use. Detail is easier to not show than to add later, I'm thinking. Also, some of these models (mostly the general purpose stuff, is my guess...the "signature" things I'd rather keep for myself) may eventually be released for the community and I have no idea what angle they will be seen from in other productions.