Quote - I included a screen shot of my settings destro.
Yes, I see some of the problems I was having are in the following....
 
A) I WAS using Texture Filtering! But I was told by E-Frontier that this would help to show
more detail in my renders?! Hmmmmm.....

B) My Bucket size is/has been 48...What is Large? Up to 64+ or down to 32???
C) I know that removing backfacing polys help...but sometimes the background will suffer edge loss...is this common?

D) YES! I am doing these for Print work. I use 350-400 DPI. I have several that wil never see Ren Galleries or any other on-line gallery. Because they are for Poster/T-Shirt and Decal works. I minimum print at 11 X 17, and find that this render setting (*3600 X 2700) gives the best Up/Down quality. When positive that something is exceptional, I save out at the largest setting.

E) I do not surf or run other programs during renders...learned that from doing fractals! LOL!

F) I don't really know Python as well as i would like...maybe you could either IM me or post here how to manually merge the Shadows and the Main Render?

Lastly, Thank You very much fo all your assistance...I am Very serious about Poser6 and all the programs i own and are learning. But I do lack time in these mediums, so someone like yourself that has been working with them for a while is always valued as a mentor and advisor.
(((huggerz!)))
Ariana

Okay, let's try to work with this.

The first thing that popped out at me was the Min Displacement Bounds. If you aren't using displacement, then set this ridiculously high. A number like 10.00 should do. Low displacement bounds kill renders.

Texture filtering is only worthwhile if there are artifacts that the filtering can get rid of. (As far as I know. Maybe e-F is right, but I have yet to see any cases where it made a positive difference in the render, and it just causes so much lag it's not worth it to me. Maybe with your resolutions you need it, but give a test render a shot, and see if you can get around it.)

That thread I posted had a great writeup on Bucket Size. It even has a posting from an e-F rep, so the info is good there. My general rule with Bucket Size is to use your system RAM as a base for hte calculations. I raise and lower it in multiples of 32. On my last system I had 1GB of RAM. I used a bucket of 128 most of the time. If the render locked up, I would use 64, but most of the time 128 did the job. Given your system RAM, I would give 256 a shot. If you are still dealing with problems, drop it to 128, then 64, then 32. The higher setting should allow Poser to do less total calculations, since more data will be done in one spot, rather than doing the same # of calcs over a longer period of time.

I don't know about the background problem with removing backfacing polys. Obviously, since it's an option, there will be issues turning it off, but I don't know what they are, and have never ran into any myself. This is a judgement call for you I guess.

Ahh, print work. Yes, you have to make high res images then. That bites, but not much you can do there.

I usually leave my high end renders to run overnight, so I can do other things while I'm awake.

As for merging the renders, there is no need to worry about Python. All you need to do is save the two images (which the script does automatically, but will not save to PSD, so you may just want to handle it manually.) Once you have an all shadow render, and a no shadow render, take both images into an image editor that supports layers, such as Photoshop, and put them on separate layers. Then you can manually adjust the shadow layer to look as perfect as you want. I have found this to be a much better solution than having the shadows in the original render. You get so much more control over the fine tuning of the shadows, plus, you have the option of putting the shadows on multiple layers, giving you even more control over fine tuning.

Glad I can be of assistance. I was away from the Rosity forums for a while, since I was having severe computer problems. (I actually lost everything on two separate occasions this year. The last time, I just broke down and got a new computer. That was just a few weeks ago, so I have been in the process of getting everything in place to really dive back in and get busy again.)