I forgot to mention that I had the volumetrics enabled for the atmosphere, with a pretty heavy overcast to get a more even illumination. The scene consisted of 2 figures (Dacort's Naga and Handspan Studio's 'Amelia' morph for Judy)...well, 3 figures. Digiport had a contribution as well... :P. One dynamic hair prop (Hmann's ponytail) and a dynamic cloth prop (Nerd's summer dress). Tropical water on the ground plane (so there were a lot of rays being thrown to the 'horizon'), a couple of cloud planes, 2 Sonneratia, a monstera, and 2 reeds. No wind but plenty of breeze, so there was some serious vector calculation being done at the time (I was definitely pushing things to see what penalties volumetrics added, and was pleasantly surprised). And yeah, I left off the network stuff and the KVM switch ($40 on pricewatch for a 4 port switch), as that could get into some configuration issues, depending on the OS and skill of the networker. And the bootable HD is an excellent idea, with the caveat that your hardware is identical over the farm...I need to check into that one some more for the nitty gritty... I will be among the first to admit that Vue isn't as fast as the higher ticket packages...but I also didn't spend 4 digits on it. The VuePoser combo is definitely the poor man's alternative, with the penalties to match... But then, I be poor, man.... :P Actually, my next step in this process is building a 5th box in the rendergarden, doing a dual install of Poser and Vue onto it, and using -it- as the rendercontroller. That way I can build a scene on my main box, shift it over to the garden and turn it loose, then start on the next while a render is in process. -That- little enhancement will speed things up considerably in itself (and I've already planned for the issues that would arise regarding mismatched pathnames in the .vue and .pz3 files; just mirror my resources onto multiple partitions in the controller box, and use Partition Magic to rename the partitions, so that they have the proper virtual identification).