Quote - I get this wierd thing with IDL where it precalc's 80% of a scene fine, then the rest takes FOREVER, and everything is red (you know how it puts red dots in the precalc render, well it looks like I took MS Paint to it and painted red at the bottom)

I have seen this too. Check your Irradiance Sample Size. If that is set very low, the IDL pre-calc samples can be very dense even in areas with little or no geometry variation, and the precalc will take ages to achieve a worse result. The reasons for this are discussed in the huge Poser 8 IDL thread.

"If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."
Mr Otsuka, the old black tomcat in Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami)