Thanks Mark for these 2 renders. The picture quality is great.

From what I have researched, Embree actually works better and faster in complex scenes than in simple ones.

When you mention 12 to 18 minutes render times with Embree, I would assume that without Embree it would have been roughly 1/2 hour to 1 hour. This is a huge time-saving especially for lengthy animations.

I don't have much hope for Carrara to integrate Embree anytime soon, but I am certain that the next version of Poser Pro will.