Well, the basic Softimage package costs less than Carrara pro, but I am not looking for complexity, just realism, poser-friendliness and at least twice as fast rendering as Poser, everything else equal. Thanks for the specific answers above. My scenes are not big and complex with a lot of characters, clothes, props, walls, chrome, etc., so the raytrace/reflection is not critical. However, excellent, fast AO/HDRI and SSS IS. To find out for sure I will have to download the demo and do time trials, certainly. ::::: Opera :::::