I get funny results when mixing SSS and Diffuse/phong. Probably some bug in Indigo and bidirectional where you get these multi-coloured samples and bright spots that make the image go black....
Clean SSS....well it's just a matter of more CPU horsepower, rendering time and patience
Bah I have so many final renders to do, the backlog is piling up!
Playing around in Sketchup and got some more ideas for renders, but will probbaly wait till I get my Quad core system to render up a big final clean render, as speed is so slow even at these small sizes

Glass, SSS, Reflective phong and bump map = melting CPU
at least the exit portal helps.... gotta say there probably aren't too many renderers that could do justice to this type of scene with accuracy as well. There is some serious level of light interaction here!
only Bidirectional MLT allows this scene to be rendered properly