I have 512 MB RAM, about 6GB left on the HD and Windows ME. I think you're right Axe, it must be a memory issue. I'm like you, Dizzie, I like to do several things at the same time. And these were just little test renders at the default size, so I didn't think it would be a problem. Of course the high-res map is quite big - maybe I should make a lower res version for the working and testing phase. The interesting thing is that I did not have this problem in Poser5 and I noticed that the textured preview looked much better in Poser5 than in Poser4: in P4 the skin texture looks quite blotchy and in P5 it's nice and smooth. I just started the work in P4 because in some ways it's much faster. Thanks everybody! :)