Quote - Took that layered concept to heart, Lisa: great idea. So, what? hide (make invisible) certain objects and render other ones, so the lighting remains the same? Poser 7 spat the dummy (Aussie-ism, Anthanasius, means: didn't like it and kicked up a fuss) when I added plants and stuff to the foreground. So, I'll be rendering them separately, I guess.

Dig out your Kerkythea manual and read over the layer masking section. The concept is pretty well covered and applies to just about any render engine including FF and 3Delight.

For Poser FF this helps with multiple render passes: Advanced Render Settings , does the grunt work for you.

There used to be something comparable for DS but I don't know if it has been updated for DS3.

Let me repeat though, "Multi-pass rendering is not something that has to be done." Anyone can render a scene, call it a day and sometimes have very good results. However if you want ultimate control over the end result multi-pass rendering + postwork simply can't be beat.

Render in passes and save the generated masks. The masks are very useful for postworking the scene and can be useful in shader building.

Examples:

Decided you want to change the lip color on V4 after all? Are you going to re-render the entire scene or just replace the color on the rendered lip layer in post?

Want to use a mask in the lip shader? Multi-pass render a front orthographic view and use the generated mask as the base to create the shader mask.

Want to change the background? Switch it out in an image editor or re-render the background and just the parts that cast shadows on the background, remix with the original render parts.

Want to have re-lighting available? Add a normal pass then re-light at will in post.

Got a hot spot that you can't fix and keep the the scene integrity in render? Use dodge tool in image editing on the blown out render result or re-render that portion at a lower light intensity and composite in post to balance with the rest of the scene.

Like those tinted B&W pictures? Very easy to do if you render in passes as it significantly simplifies the selection of the area you wish to tint.

The point is to do as much as feasible for any given project in the render engine but create the option to expand the artist interpretation of the piece after rendering the meshes.

I do a lot of archvis at work so I have to retain the flexibility to switch out components quickly at client request. If I had to rely on rendering the scene again every time there was a miniscule change I would get very little done. By rendering in passes I can make changes efficiently.

Granted I don't use Poser or DS for anything important but the concept is the same in any render engine that supports multiple passes. Not using that capability is akin to having a 4-wheel drive vehicle and only driving it on the street. Yeah it works but you're not getting the full utilization of the equipment.