)... a few FX shots that are getting some heat. Nobody is going to think less of you for keeping them as they are...
Just cause I feeling like chatting some more here about this stuff. Nothing heavy, not being defensive. 
I can assure ya'll that Ady would've been very happy if I gave him a "Guess what I did!" for the DS surface for that shot, a detailed-ish anim in HD for that composite layer, but that simply was/is not going to happen (without a big upgrade in resources of some sort). To do that in CG (of course making a miniature of that and really filming it is out) with anything less than a decent render farm would be insaneness. Even with very low-poly versions of the tile meshes, we'd still be talking many millions of polygons to render in the end.
(I know you know Auggie, but everyone else -> ) Think about what we're talking about rendering here: a solid mile+ of very greeble-covered surface!
Even if I could use tricks to cut the rendering materials down a third for the near-same end result, or even further, that's still just not worth it to attempt with my amount of resources (one computer, low experience). I would probably trick it right back down to looking like mush again. Just saying that it's not a matter of not feeling like giving the elements a boost now. I would love to throw those tiles down and duplicate them a thousand of times over and render them them out in a couple of days to give to Ady for an upgrade for that shot, and I'm sure he'd love to receive such a thing, but there is simply no way to do that on my end here/now. It would take not days, but many weeks to output that, and he doesn't want to wait that long -- and I don't want my 3D computer off limits to my creative playings for that long (putting aside my electric bill!
) But it is cool seeing people thinking that we have/had the capability to just wantonly produce such things as a square mile+ of Death Star surface from scratch for a shot. Edit2: Whether Ady would welcome other contributors to create such composite layers for him is, of course, his call.
Okay, shutting up now.