Quote - > Quote - If you have any dynamic hair in the scene and want raytrace shadows, you are facing gigantic rendertime hits unless you turn off "visible to raytrace" for the hair. But if you turn off raytrace on hair your hair will not be casting shadows. What to do, what to do. Either live without shadows from hair or throw in a depth mapped light just to cast shadows from hair. Or...accept the hit.

This is another great flaw of Poser, that you cannot set a light to only affect a selection of objects in a scene, or to ignore certain objects.  What I'd suggest for dynamic hair (and how it's done in other apps e.g. Cinema) is to have one or more specific light(s) affect hair, and other practical lights ignore it.  In Poser, all lights have a global effect for the entire scene, unless there is some trickery that can be done with materials to link a given surface with a particular light (I don't think there is).

this is an old thread but i had to writte what i think.
i have been readin some PIXAR papers. and pixars renderman doesnt use raytraced shadows for hair.
they created special shadows for hair and for clouds, and dust called ''deep shadows''. they are faster. with hair and dust and clouds you dont need details in the shadows. because dust and clouds alreeady blur the shadows.

i agree. it would be amazing if we could use one light only for a specific prop or hair. but it wont happen.

on the 5 lights system. i am also using this. i am praying that poser 8 will have an area light. but i am afraid that if SM will create this light the rendertime will be the same like using 5 lights. this wouldnt change anything. right?
i hope in poser 8 we will be able to make fast soft shadows.

about ILM. ILM started using AO  and raytraced shadows  in the movie Pearl Harbor. about pixar movies. pixar is sometimes using 100 lights in one enviorment. i think they dont notice the bad depth shadow maps because 100 lights hides this.