For the turntables, are the objects literally sitting on a ground plane? Are they inside a room as well or is it a 3d render to show off the model only? If so, similar to the type of thing you’d see on a modelling reel you might find that Brute force and light cache is a very quick option, as if your object isn’t under a roof, a lot of the brute force rays bounce off the object and immediately fire off into space which leads to very quick sampling. You can control your grain using the bf samples and if the image looks clean enough in a single still, then you won’t get any major artifacts over the course of the animation in most cases!
yes exactly. If you use a dome light for your primary ray (direct lighting) then brute force will compute 1 secondary bounce and stop, which will not illuminate as bright in the secondary bounces but will still be gi. However, since this is a more of a product rendering in the open space, I think the render time should be quite minimal even if you use bf/bf for both primary and secondary.