Try working in outline and cartoon w/line preview as much as possible, maybe? Use smooth shadded unless you really need to see the textures for what you are doing. Try using (UGH!) "bounding box tracking".

If the figures are not touching can you pose one then save to the library, do the next and save, and then load them all only when you want to render. If there are shadows I think there need to be all the figures in the scene at once.

There are some "morph stripping" scripts but they may only be for Millenium 3 figures. I sometimes make my character and then pose it in the default be zeroing the x, y, and z translation on the hip and body and using the "zero figure" button on the Joint Paremeter window. I export it to my special "MyPeople" folder in geometries and take a .cr2 from which I have removed all but the essential morphs using MorphManager (free) and change the 2 .obj lines to point to the figure in my folder using EditPade Lite (free).

figureResFile :Runtime:Geometries:newMaleCasHi:newMaleCasHi.obj

becomes...

figureResFile :Runtime:Geometries:MyPeople:MyNewGuy01.obj

If you are using P6 you will need to re-save your figure with compression turned off in preferences so MorphManager and EditPad can open it.

More often I work with a stripped .cr2 or a Reduced Resoulution version if it is possible and then once it is posed I replace it with the full character with the single checkmark and so far they have always taken the pose with only the need for a little tweeking in the hands and feet -- don't forget those hand cameras! And the "AUX" camera seems to work really well for zooming into details to see if things are "going through" each other etc.

Also you can make a back-up of your textures and then use Irfanview (free) to sample them down to a much smaller size... I have found even 512x512 or whatever works without degrading my screen resolution renders. 1024x1024 would probably work even for 300dpi image I think maybe.

Use as few lights as possible until you are ready to render -- even there I seldom use more than four, esp. with IBL and point lights but I guess there is a tradion of using vast amounts of lights.

The key maybe is to think of each time you move a camera,light, prop or figure Poser is doing a series of rough realtime render.... you want those render to be as light as possible.

I would love to here any other tips or if mine are messed up somehow.