i can't imagine the scenes you guys must be loading up. just amazing. when I think 'overnight' its for a 300 frame animation! You can imagine the intensity with which animators obsess over render time. Here's my question. You must be rendering to a new window, right? And don't you get progress bars as each texture loads, as each shadow map is calculated, etc., to demonstrate progress? I get progress bars. And then, when actual rendering begins, don't you see each 'bucket' of image fill in a small portion of the window? Sure, it's in slow motion, but still you must get some progress every hour or so to reassure you it is chunking away..... ::::: Opera :::::