Quote -  I dunno, during a fast moving motion blurred animation I think depth maps can hold their own. Feature films from Pixar / ILM didn't begin using raytrace shadows or AO until a few years ago.

Ah, but that's something different entirely.  You can get away with a lot of approximating, low-rezing and outright cheating when movement is involved.

Motion blur and the way the human brain processes movement, keyframing in some situations (the brain filling in the blanks of what literally isn't there) means things that are taken for granted in even a fairly amateurish still image are very much overkill in motion, wasting processor time and creation time.

Look at fast-moving games, like the newer FPS's.  Gorgeous graphics but the moment you stop moving and take a look around at still objects the unreality is blatantly obvious.