Unzipped, You're probably burned out but, 75% is too much of a reduction for this distance imo (don't call me that,,,lol). Skin, I set from 50-70% depending on distance to camera (full figure view only). > Interesting it did not help speed. This is still relative as I'm sure it lowered memory usage(how many hi-res skins vs low-res skins you can render in one pass). I don't reduce the skin at all for a head shot. < I see in your last post you covered this with bucket size. The "Wildhair", oddly looks much better to me despite the huge reduction. I reduced mine 50% and was still getting artifacting with shading rate at 1.00. Your reduction seems right. Koz hair is conforming (a figure)? Definately too much reduction here. I use 75% of original. It screams for a low shading rate as do most of his. Some displacement, too. One thing, you have RayTrace(2-3) bounces on for what? Reflect nodes on eyes? This is slowing you down, imo. If not using reflect nodes, I'd set it to 0.00bounces. face_off always has reflects on his eyes. Maybe that's why they are in his settings. and yours... And I noticed you have AO off in this run. Turning "visible in RayTracing" off on the hair should have a dramatic decreasing effect in rendertime. I did not hear you mention if it was on/off. All in all a very helpful run of tests. I'll have to be stubborn about the hair texture reduction technique as you really went too low in res with this example. Stewer recommended a 20-50% reduction. I've had spectacular results. Awesome stuff! This is how you get your renders. No more throwing darts...