I can't get to Tripod right now, but I'll try again later.... I have noticed that in RDS the hybrid renderer tends to be much more artifact-laden than the full raytracer. (Same was true in RayDream 3D.) If you're working on some lower-res stuff for the web, the hybrid might be fine, but for video or if you're planning on a pro print from your image, I think you just have to knuckle down and eat the time to use the raytracer. (These artifacts might also be responsible for the mysterious dots in the distance, too.) Since the underlying code in RDS and Carrara are basically the same, I'd take it as pretty likely that the hybrids work very much the same. As for DOF in an animation, I think that'd probably smooth out a bunch if raytraced, too. The hybrid seems to have some attributes similar to compression, and if each frame is "compressed" or hybridized individually, there may well be some problems with dancing pixels growing in importance. Have you considered doing two renders and compositing them in post-production? You could do the background in one pass with the truck cloaked, then the truck in the next pass with the background cloaked or deleted. If you render as a sequenced photoshop file (or a QT if your in the mac environment), the alpha channel should be preserved and allow a clean, easy composite in AfterEffects or Premiere. By rendering the BG seperately, you could force a blur in post. Just an idea.... (And that shot in Creepshow was particularly difficult because I was in a wetsuit in very cold water in Prescott, AZ for almost the entire time we were shooting it. Of course, there were no wetsuit shoes big enough for me in Prescott, so I wore high-tops. All my body-warmed water just shot right out my ankles.... I know, bitch, bitch, bitch!)