I've made Environments for all of my movie scenes. For example one environment is a neighborhood with a bunch of houses, trees, a road, some traffic STOP signs.

Then in my scene i will have characters like James, or V3 based or M3 based with clothing on.
Seems poser makes a movie slower b ecause there are too many objects that need memory. 

For example if i MAKE MOVIE using display mode and the display mode is SHADED, if i have characters + eenvironment , the making process is like 5 seconds per frame or more but if i do a movie with just the character then it's much faster.

then if i were to use Low poly characters and that's it, then that's super fast. 

So if i want V3, M3 based characters and i want it to make the movie fast( in display mode SHADED), i should make my movie with no Environment and then just use a BG picture layer in Final cut?

That means I have to give up all the Camera techniques that would be possible if i had characters in environments. For example, if i do camera rotations, the cam would go around the character but it wouldn't make sense cause the BGpic is static and 2 dimensional so it won't change.

I always render out in layers and composit in a program like After Effects or Final Cut Studio. So, the characters would be on one layer, the backgrounds on another, and so forth.

This speeds up production in a number of ways. First, if you have a static camera shot, you only have to render out a single frame of the background and composit that in with the animated footage of the characters. Second, if you have to do multiple takes to get the motions right on the characters, or you have to change some details, you do not have to re-render the background each time. Third, the background is re-usable, so that you can use it in multiple scenes.

The same thing can be done in moving backgrounds. All you do is render out the background with a moving camera and then--AND THIS IS IMPORTANT--without changing the camera movement at all, render out the characters. When composited in After Effects or Final Cut, the result will be seamless.

I use After Effects for compositing. Open-source programs like Jashaka can also be used for compositing and I understand that Blender also has compositing functions available.

 But would it make a difference if i take the characters out.? I mean the environment is pretty busy also. i have tons of houses , buildings, trees. etc. I'm guessing it would be slow too.. no?

I'll try what you said though:) 

Yes, it will make a difference. Not so much in the total render time per frame, but more in the time that it takes for you to perfect an animation. You will find huge time savings come available in the compositing stage because you don't have to go back and re-render stuff like backgrounds. And it's a huge time saver with static, i.e. non-moving cameras because rather than rendering out the background for each and every frame, you only render it once--on the first frame.

If something doesn't change from frame to frame, then why bother re-rendering it for each frame?

RJ

You can also render the environment in layers.