Interesting.  With 'Opaque in shadows' checked, the attached render was timed at 2:01:503.  With the same feature un-checked, 1:40:778.  So there's a speed difference, but it isn't nearly as drastic as it seemed to be in Poser Pro 2012.  Yet... I can't see any difference between the two renders, as a switch between them using the slider in the render preview frame.

But... what is happening in this render?  I have also raised 'Root softness' from 0.1 to 0.8, for all three sets of guide hairs loaded onto this figure.  All of a sudden he's... properly shedding hair, with some kind of blow-away effect.  :scared:

No, wait... gotta reduce the root softness.  Dangit, dangit.  Reduce, not raise.

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Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking.  He apologizes for this.  He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.

Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below.  His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.