Re: time per scene rendering...you have to understand that the
Toasters
render 24 hours a day. Ron et al set 'em going before they leave
for the
night, and the next morning come in to pick up the finished scene.
So you can
do a LOT of CGI in the course of a week. Generally several minutes
of new
stuff per week...and yes, that includes long, panning shots. Trust
me,
there's a LOT of CGI in just about every episode of the series.
A couple of
character-based stories are light, but they're more than
compensated for in
heavy-CGI stories like "Midnight," "Sky," and "Raiding Party," to
name a few.

jms