I had time yesterday to work on the fruit bowl scene. I created several passes for the render - key light pass, fill light pass, rim light pass, global illumination (GI) pass, z-depth pass and an occlusion pass. I also decided on my render composition size. I wanted an extremely wide composition. All the objects in the scene are procedurally shaded, except for the bump map on the leaf which was painted using Photoshop.
For the keylight pass, I had one directional light casting yellowish sunlight with slightly harsh shadows.
For the fill light pass, I had about 46 spot lights in a dome casting soft blue light with soft shadows.
For the rim light pass, I isolated the fruits only and placed a spot light behind them. I also had it adjusted to show off the subsurface scattering on the grapes.
For the GI pass, I had three spotlights emitting GI photons only from different directions at the fruit bowl. I had also enabled final gathering to achieve better results.
This is the ambient occlusion pass.
And this is what the final result looks like. I added fog and a vignette to bring focus to the fruit bowl.
However, I wouldn't call this done because of one minor mistake:
One of the cherries is floating above the plate. This was pretty frustrating. I should be able to be done by tonight.