I've begun scouting some research material, for inspiration and style guides. Mainly been looking at screenshots from games and 3d renders. Some of the sites I've searched through includes:

3D Artists
Mmorpg.com
Game Screenshots

The overall style and look we're attempting to achieve and use as a look-and-feel guide is similar to the post-apocalyptic, tech styled universe of Unreal, specifically from Unreal Engine 3.

That's for style reference, other things I need to look into some more includes:

Shading techniques - Mental ray, HDRI, possibly normal mapping to reduce render time?
Shadow techniques - Depth map shadows or raytraced. Leaning towards DMS right now since it greatly improves rendering time, however needs some more research and adjusting to get just right.

Q to self: Best trade-off between shading/shadowing/lighting et.c. for a pretty good result for realistic rendering?

Note to self: Setup a research schedule. Also some kind of todo list. Todo list now available.