"Once again -- it depends upon what you want to do with your 3D software." produce complex steampunk machines with human figures actually ;) when I'm in tS, I rarely hit max mem usage and thats with scenes far more complex than most do in Poser, (poser equv - 10 V3's plus textures)... in Poser I've done scenes with 4 or 5 figures easily. the secret? balance the scene. if you have a figure thats at a distance, do you need that to be a V3/M3? does that figure need 4096x4096 textures? does it even need hair? = nope, since you won't see it! use low rez, have a texure set setup for that. say 1024x1024. looks like crap? who cares. it's not the main part of the scene, it's background. midrange allow yourself more detail say texture ranges of 2048, mid range figure rez. the main figures in the foreground? thats where you use your V3/M3's with the massively detailed textures etc. as to speed. get over it. this is 3D. learn patience. hell the first render I ever did took 72 hours! here's the news kids. Raytracing, Hair, IBL, etc etc etc cost CPU time = Time Rendering. the more you add the more timecost it's going to be. adding ram or a faster CPU will help but the bottom line is it will take time whatever.