Thank you dustrider, that's the kind of information i've been trying to obtain both in the Carrara and Poser forums here, and at RDNA. I appreciate you taking the time to both attempt a fair test and posting the results, with images. Now, you don't give your rendertime comparison. Next time you come back through here, can you tell us? Even if you don't have the exact numbers, just a rough comparison of render time. I would say the skin qualities on your two renders are equal, and the lighting is close, but could be made equal pretty easily, but the resolution on the hair...that would have to be considerably kicked-up on the Carrara side; see how individual strands are resolved on the Poser render overall and especially in the tips, and only groups are resolved on the tips in Carrara and the strands are coarser. To get a true apples/apples I would have to push the Carrara tools to resolve the hair tighter. I am not asking you to expend a lot of time on my behalf, it is my responsibility to do this research, but can you at least say this: is Carrara at least CAPABLE of rendering that hair as fine as the results in the Poser image? My Carrara 30-day time trial is still running. My initial investigation revealed my key question: FOR MY TYPE OF SCENE, you can't use one as "the app" and the other as a supplement; you have to use them in concert together. I was hoping I could use Carrara strictly as a render platform and do everything else in Carrara, OR use Poser to simply establish my characters and their clothes, move all the assets into Carrara and pose, arrange, light, animate and render there. Nope. Not for my type of scene, extreme close ups with high realism on skin and dynamic hair in animation. There's no native dynamic hair in Carrara, and the animation slider is far more sluggish than Poser's, so posing and animating do not flow as well as in Poser. Also, I was able to tell that the animation tools are not on a par with Poser's. But the real killer? I took one scene typical of my style in through Native with simple prop hair instead of dynamic. I pushed in close, more than twice as close as in your image above, and I tried to get the sharp resolution (although with soft shadows) on hair and skin. Naturally, being quite new, I was fumbling with tools I had not properly learned. But when I began to render, and began to discuss my render times with other people, it started to emerge that the vaunted Carrara render speed is not necessarily there. I was rendering in Poser faster than in Carrara, going for the same quality ON MY TYPE OF IMAGE. Now, with deeper study of Carrara's tools, it is VERY possible I might get advanced enough to catch up and surpass my times in Poser. And of course, not all my scenes are extreme close ups, and if Carrara REALLY rocks on scenes like the one assembled on this thread, and on outdoor HDRI/IBL scenes, then that would be fantastic; I'd be in heaven to be in carrara at that point. But one word, with respect, to Carrara fans: for my type of scene, if you invest a lot of experience and experimenting in it, Poser is no toy. From the other point of view: can you do everything in Poser and just render in Carrara? The answer is no, per everything I've learned and from your statements. Now, the tweaking might not be so bad (reading what you wrote). Carrara has an excellent road to realistic skin through shaders and SSS, I believe that. Learning to use both programs, more or less like on a teeter-totter, might be worth achieving. That way I could put the emphasis on either program depending on the scene, according to which program does certain things best. I have long been considering doing just such a teeter-totter method with Poser and 3DSMax or Maya. It's the learning curve to get good that is daunting. It has taken my SUCH a long time to get decent results in Poser for my type of scene, admittedly an ambitious style to work in, regardless of the app. I can do everything I want and need in Poser. But I wish it were faster rendering my extreme animations. Again, thank you for your effort. ::::: Opera :::::