*It's interesting to me to note that his weapon of choice is Lightwave.

*I was wondering what he used. He put up the plugin for the light effects to download if you are interested..

but spending FIVE YEARS of one's personal time to create.......*that?

That was a typo. He corrected to 5 years in cgi. This makes sense.. The render build was pretty quick.
Have to agree that this level of realism will be surpassed very soon and many times over