Unzipped, Yes, RayTrace "maps" are really a leftover from P4 or shadowmap lights and serve no purpose. I set them to 256 in case there is a quick memory calc that I can avoid. RayTrace shadows are severe and blur(5-12) does not take care of all of it so, I usually set shadow to 0.400 to help disperse it (on skin). If using a spot you can choke the angle 0start 60end to soften some more. You need an ibl fill in the scene for this... it takes up the slack on the mainlight. A rimlight can either assist the mainlight or (attached) create a nice highlight (RayT also). With this setup, I can crank out a render every 6-10 minutes with decent results. Granted, not as spectacular as a nice face_off setup but, 10 times quicker. Switching the mainlight to shadowmap/3072 for the final is a nice alternative. So, you were using RayTrace in your tests? That explains the eyelash shadows! Shadowmaps don't do eyelashes too well. Also, before you raise pixel samples or shading rate, try scaling your scene 1000%. I have yet to test this but I'm sure it's a solution for something. RayTrace is strangled at Poser scale. Reflect/Refract/artifacting dissappears at 1000% scale. Ronstuff proved this in P5 on an old thread of mine. Bump and some other shader nodes do not scale with the figure so, a manual job will be needed. 0.01bump becomes 0.100 at scaled version. Worth a look into... When you get to hair, please let me know.