I think it's also a little subjective as to what a person considers a long time.  To me it's nothing to leave a render going all night or even into the next day when I'm at work.  But I've had friends who thought anything over 20 minutes to be too much.

Has anyone tried importing the Poser Genesis to Vue?  I haven't had a chance to play with any of this yet, but I'm curious if I can now use M5 in Poser and then import him into Vue as easily as I do the Gen4 figures.

I would love to have a newborn baby, even if it's just an appropriately bumpy shape in a dynamic cloth blanket.

What about SAV Electra hair?

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/sav-electra-hair/90579

I used the Sonia hair in my last purely Poser render, and I found it rendered quite quickly in comparison to other hair models in the past.  In fact, I really liked working with the model as a whole.  Currently working on a project importing it into Vue, and still loving it.

I'm an avid roleplayer, so most of my images are of my RP characters and their stories.  Sometimes it's an image to memorialize a particularly noteworthy scene, sometimes just an image showing a snapshot of their life to help give a sense of their character, and sometimes just portraits for use in forum avatars and signatures.

I do try to pull from other sources of inspiration such as music and story characters whenever I can just to shake things up.  Sadly my last few attempts ended up tossed on the "I'm too frustrated to work on this anymore" pile and haven't left it.

I know this has been said many times, but first make sure your parents/his guardian is okay with it.

If he's a mature 15-year-old truly interested in art and the human form, he might actually get irritated if you coddle him with just rendering the cutsie stuff, and turn him right off of Poser and digital art.

Maybe steer him towards using M4 and encourage superhero renders or brooding anti-hero renders instead?

Keep an eye out for contests and giveaways, too.  I won an iPad 2 last year in a radio call-in contest.  Never know until you try. :)

Just be careful who you send to pick it up.  Hubby picked it up for me, and I haven't seen it since.

I don't render males a lot, but what I'm usually missing are skin textures for more rugged men.  Also for men who are in their 40's.  It's hard making a render of a man in his very sexy middle years when all of the character textures are for 20-something pretty boys.  The skin is just different.

Hair.  Again, too many pretty hairstyles.  Too much pomp and poof, and not enough rugged or every day.

Clothes.  So much is effeminate or something an average man wouldn't wear.  I want jeans that look comfortable and average, not skin tight and up to his rib cage.  I'd love more clothes that are good for post-apocalyptic wasteland images and biker gear like the guys wear on Sons of Anarchy, but that's just me.

A re-rigged version of V4 sounds far more appealing at this point than V5.  Considering the investment most of us have put into her over the years, getting more mileage out of an improved V4 would be fantastic!  My wallet weeps over the idea of V5 and rebuilding a content library.

It might be WitchHazel by Prae.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/witchhazel-outfit-for-v4-a4-elite/74068

Merry Christmas!

Quote - Tried that.
That was my first thought too, but while the strap stayed on the shoulder, the bodice still slipped below the breast.
However, I found the dresses, after digging through the dynamic stuff in the marketplace.
At least I think those were it. (Not 100% sure)
It was the glamorous collection, I think.
Looking at the promos... some of those poses... look incredibly dodgy, with the front slipping very very low to the extent of near exposure, and to me it looks like they are only held up by sheer chance (and the position of the arm). (Sorry, Corvas, maybe you can shed some light on what was going on.)

As I said, I was tempted, but the two of us (though rather sozzled) could not get them to stay on her chest, unless we lifted her arms.
Not even with a constrained group on the shoulder -- and lets not even go to the strapless one, we gave up on that one inside of 10 minutes. It would not stay on.
Again, my apologies to Corvas, because I am really only guessing, but that's kinda what the dresses looked like...
Frankly... that promo with the purple dress... I DO wonder what that would look like from the front, because it looks... uh... yeah.
I also notice that every promo has a disclaimer that the dress was fiddled with in a 3D app after simulation... and postwork to fix nipples...
(The promo behind the materials looks well dodgy, if you ask me...)

I'm really sorry, I don't mean to tear into something that looks so stunning, but we just couldn't get it to work, which makes me wonder if it was the dresses, rather than us.
I just simulated a free dress from Poserworld, granted, that one has arms, but it didn't fall off... Nor did the freebie one from Tabala, even when I had V4 lean forward.

I just finished a render with one of the Glamorous Collection dresses, and I know exactly what you mean.  I had to play and play with constrained groups in order to make it not slip below the bust line.  By selecting all of the collar all the way around as well as the shoulders, I got it to finally behave.

Quote -
Hmmm,

I have no issues with 4 -  V4's loaded with AerySoul (Large Textures) Products and all have real strand based hair...

Bucket 32
Shade Rate .25
R/T 1
Disp Enabled
.001 Min Disp Bnds

Separate Process
4 threads

Irr Cahce @ 90
Pix Smpl @ 10

Render Time  40min +/-

I've always had Min Shading Rate at  .01 in my final render settings.  Wonder if that's where I'm blowing myself out.

Thanks for the tips.  I was just trying to put together a simple Christmas render with five figures, a tree, and a few gift boxes.  I managed to cobble it together in Photoshop from the bits and pieces I had managed to get to finish rendering.  I didn't think to set the bucket size to lower than 32, and it was at two threads and separate processes.

I didn't see any displacement maps, just bumps.  But the Min Disp Bound is greyed out at 0.

Always more to learn and settings to dig through. :)