I don't know how far you call "next level" of animation (I don't talk about a still images, I've seen tons of them, I'm talking of Iray animation who does not take 20 hours for 15s of video)
But with the advise of Steeve and some personal "adjustements", this 17 s of video was rendered in 3 hours. I think that I don't expect better with my humble machine but this level of quality is okay for what I do. Now, I'll be focusing in my storyboard and will continue to work with shaders and lighting as you told. And I hope a solution will be found for the flickering problem :P flickering appears with speed movements so for speeds movements I'll stil using iclone render




     

Looks not bad at all! The water comes up nice :)

Good to see that there is hope for us 1070 guys ;)

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Thank you  3Dtester, but we really need realflow :-) . 


     

I TOTALLY AGREE. IRAY IS USULESS TO RENDER ANIMATIONS. EVEN IF YOU HAVE A POWEFULL MACHINE. FORGET IT.

Yes, I definitely choosed nativ render, playing with  GI , IBL and AO and the result is so good considering the time rendering. Since now, I didn't see a good, long animation with Iray, yes it's very good for very short animations and still images but not for movie