"Any ideas?" Well, since you do have 3dsmax already with the Brazil rendering system plugin, I'm assuming you're capable of investing some money in apps. What I would suggest is to look into the BodyStudio plugin for 3ds (roughly $200+ I think), and port the entire animation over there for rendering. It will bring over all dynamic simulations you might have too. Is there any particular reason you MUST use Firefly for this (ie., fast micro-poly displacement, etc.)? If you have Max v6, then you have Mental Ray, which does do micropoly displacement as well, but it's not as fast as the Firefly renderer for such things. If you must stick with Firefly, then you might try rendering the animation in "layers" to save on processing burden (render the background elements first, etc., then the figures, and composite shadows in an FX editor). Also try hiding some objects that may not be visible by the camera, like body parts hidden by clothing, etc.

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Tools :  3dsmax 2015, Daz Studio 4.6, PoserPro 2012, Blender v2.74

System: Pentium QuadCore i7, under Win 8, GeForce GTX 780 / 2GB GPU.