CGI realism..YAWN
Anybody who spends 20 hours modeling and lighting 20 strips of negative film need his/her head examined.
He could have hung, lit and shot the scene using real negatives in under 2 hours.
"Realistic" CGI is only good to shoot an object or situattion that cannot exist in reality or would be prohibitively expensive to shoot.
Modeling a realistic cueball to sit on a realistic pooltable under realistic lighting is a gigantic waste of time IMHO.
"Well we need the cueball to roll in a "realistic" manner."
"Well after we model and light the scene we can use the computer to animate the cueball so that it rolls in a "realistic" fashion or we can roll a real cueball on a real pool table and shoot the scene for about $25.00."

Cameras and film negatives are abundant and cheap.
Water is pretty abundant too BTW.