Jimbo, you are wise to suggest doing an animation; i am all too familiar with artifacts and flicker in animation with settings pushed low to save rendertime. I have not yet attempted to get anything of quality with regard to the skin or face illumination. All my trials have been to see if I could get fully resolved hair at reasonable times. Ive now got it down to 6 minutes, 49 seconds, which is very close to my Poser times, although the Poser renders have beautiful results on everything including hair. Hopefully, I could get finished results without going all the way back to 10 minutes. For this close-in work with hair, I really hope to stay on a par with Poser on my current hardware. That way, I could purchase two Carrara-optimized computers (dual core and/or dual processor) which, according to time trials I've seen, should double or triple my speeds. Then, for the non-dynamic hair and/or long shots, I should be way ahead of the game with Carrara on those systems. I'll run an animation with the 8 minute settings to see if I get artifacts. ::::: Opera ;::::