Quote - @monkeycloud,

The only time when rendering my CPU Usage drops for a prolonged period, is when memory is close to maxed out.

So I guess what monkeycloud is suggesting for this thread (making it all on topic), is the ability for poser to shrink maps as needed, and more BB procedural shaders, to decrease the memory usage?

He he.... quite possibly. thanks General... yes I'd vote for both those things ;-)

But, that said... the render I'm running at the moment is currently doing the SSS pass.

FFRender is using 785% CPU, 4.45 GB Real Memory and 4.61 GB Virtual Memory (i.e. disk swap space)... active memory is at 8.67 GB total usage on my 16 GB system.

I'll let you know what happens when it hits the Final Render pass ;-)

EDIT: Oh yeah, and I'm reworking the scene currently to use just IDL emitters (along the lines of Seachnasaigh's tips in the thread at this link) instead of any actual spot or point lights. So will see if there's a difference after that...

...as I say, the apparent bottleneck, or whatever it is, only seems to crop up after I've either added over a certain amount of content, or after adding the lights (or perhaps certain lights).