I had to google the' Farnsworth house from 'Marla'/Alessandro Prodan' :)
That's some very impressive work with Mental ray. Back then, post processing would have been a must especially to fix some of Mental ray's errors. It's really cool to see how far renderers have come with glare, bloom, Light mixers and all. I would admit Mental Ray did serve it's purpose during its time.
Yep, a good number of tutorials back then weren't quite in-depth. His tutorial on the otherhand was very helpful.
Seriously though, how time flies :)