There is a direct relationship between render times and the number (not size) of the polygons in the scene. To put a yard stick on it the Poser 4 figures are about 15,000 polygons and V3 is about 70,000. I don't know which object is which but if you have a bubble with 4000 polygons its not going to take many for the scene to slow down to a near halt when rendering. You should be able to get a good looking bubble with 100 polygons, maybe as few as 25.