Recently I reminisced about Blender foundations first(?) effort, Tears of Steel, with the script like "Look, Celia, we have to follow our passions; you have your robotics and I just want to be awesome in space!" - "Why don’t you just admit that you’re freaked out by my robot hand?!"
I don't know what they've been up to after Tears of Steel but the primary mission of the older Blender Foundation movies was to further the tech, e.g. motion tracking.
It's not about the textures and shadows.