Hey MP, I feel honored about so many and so long postings. A million thanks!!! I tried this tips so far and if worked so far that I could import two more figures (I did not try more yet). That's what I did: - putting objects to hidden layers (helped increasing preview speed after all) - used less detailed textures on objects further away (stupid me was using the aforementionend 4000x4000 on most of the figures) -"Walk away from that computer till it's done." (Had a nice lunch in the meantime... ;-) These are my future plans to get rid off the problem: - updating to 4.2 - I found a nice break line where I can devide the scene actually in two sepearate scenes, render them seperately (with the same lighting conditions of course) and then put them together in Photoshop. This way I can use two files. - trying also to use your tutorial about rendering just parts of the scene to increase speed. Maybe you have some more suggestions. Thanks again!