The poke through on preview could well be corruption on the view from open gl. I noticed I get that on some models, mainly those that are single layered. Way to tell is that the poke through should change as you rotate the camera or character or zoom in and out. The spot render drop I haven't seen though I did get that in Bryce quite a bit. No clue what causes it, except that I guess the screen doesn't always display things as they are. It may also be related to the camera, I'm not entirely sure. Heh, you've got my sympathy on the interface at least, I like the idea behind it, just wish it was somewhat more compact. Studio should be way faster than Bryce. There's a variety of render types to choose from the quickest (or seems that way to me) is the horizontal. So far rendering is pretty quick but it does vary considerably depending on reflections, highlights, shadows, etc etc. Having rendered several things I'm not overly impressed with 3Delight so far, the resultant images seem fuzzy, like they're over-antialiased and there's no option to control that at this time. Also there appears to be some striping or banding on some of the parts. The general fuzzy feeling to finished renders leaves me twitchy for some sort of control over the output. If that remains a case through the beta I will most likely stick with Cinema or Bryce as my final render solution and use studio for other things.