I don't know if this is just common knowledge, which it actually may be if people actually read the manual, but I just discovered it today while looking something up in the manual. If you click the Area Render button, it will glow red. This will let you know it is initialized and ready to use. You can then drag a box within the Preview window. The render engine will then use your most current render settings to render just the area you boxed in! I have been using it all day to adjust small parts of my scene, then see if the changes worked the way I planned. I have the Firefly settings all the way up to production, but it runs good and fast, since I am only rendering a small section at a time. If this is nothing big, then sorry about the post. But I read the P5 manual cover to cover when I got it. I didn't bother reading the P6 manual since I only got the DL edition, and reading a 300-something page PDF is not high on my list of fun things to do. I don't remember this feature being available in past, though I may be wrong. I would never have even tried it if I didn't read it by accident, and if there is anyone else who could benefit then I am glad I posted.

This is a new feature in P6.....I love it too. Sure saves a lot of time.

Use it all the time. Almost worth the upgrade price for this feature alone. Saves a lot of time, if you want to make a change in one part of a scene, don't have to spend time rendering the whole scene just to check out that one area.

I find it very handy for spotchecking small lighting and material changes, but for complex scenes, the area render takes almost as long as the full render (on my machine anyway).

It's also useful if you want to use different render settings on different areas of an image. For example you might find that certain (faster) settings look good enough for the whole image except one figure's hair which comes out blurry. You can do a second render of just the bit around that figure's head using the area render feature at much higher (slower)settings. Save both out and stick 'em together in P-shop, still quicker than waiting for a slow render of the whole scene.

I love it and discovered it without reading the manual. Actually the Beta testers told about it.

Am I the only one who get's a stupid white outline around the area rendered if the whole scene has already been rendered before doing an area render to correct something like a hand position?!?