Well, I am going by my guru face_off. Using his shaders, if you turn the fastscatter node on, it tells you raytrace must be on. And yes, it also has to be on for AO, but there is no AO in my baseline render here. I'll look into that fastscatter/raytrace thing a little deeper. if the hair can be excluded from raytrace in Carrara, that would be fantastic. In tonight's session, I'll try removing the hair and see what the difference is, then look for the exclusion. Also, I'll post the file, as requested by bluetone, later tonight. ::: OG :::