Not sure why you are rendering several passes for this? You could easily render one pass with all the information required and as a result would look alot more realistic. < mutiplying ao is killing the realism. The floor material is too blurry for an upclose shot like that plus it would look better as stone. Anyway there…
I'm no lighting expert, but I'm pretty sure properly dialed in materials and textures make up a good portion of a nice render. Looks like you just have some basic flat colors and/or some basic procedurals/bitmaps. That in itself is making it look cartoony. Next I'd say the actual lighting itself needs work. It kind of…
GCMP, if you are trying to achieve realism in a render you pretty much never take a straight up render out of max due to the fact its far easier to iron out inconsistencies and tweaks in compositing/post than it is to constantly re-render. You will loose an awful lot of time. Plus the passes you generate for compositing…