There is way too much info in this post to digest!

Unzipped - the shadows in the post above are perfect.

There are too many points in this thread to comment on at the moment.....other than to say any render and shadow settings I may have provided err on the side of quality (so it's safe to say that you should be able to tweak the settings to get the same quality render at a much faster speed).  For rendering speed - never use infinite lights (if they use depth mapped shadows) - always go with spots.  You can should also stop any ground and wall planes from casting shadows - this reduces the shadow map size requirements.  Shading rate impacts a lot of things - I've recently found that a low shading rate is critical for effect Gather node results.

Anyway - great infor in this post.....

Creator of PoserPhysics
Creator of OctaneRender for Poser
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