Hi.  I'm working on a small video project that needs to be finished by monday and had a few questions.

1.  Some of my scenes only have subtle animated effects.  If I want to render the static parts   (Daz's giant forest scene) as a background plate, how do I tell it to render out the masks so I can composite it back in after effects?

1.  How do I access the key frame function?  (It's been a long while since version 2)  I know there is animate, but I'm on no budget and have keyframed animations before.

1. Is there a way to find out how long the image took to render once the box disappears.  Just asking cause I'm going to bed soon and the current test image is only at 10 percent.

2. Can the program do one lighting pass and save it for everything that does not change to free up proccessor power for the stuff that changes?

Thanks,

David

1. render to an image sequence, in png or tiff. It's safer anyway (easier to fix minor glitches, or to recover from a creash)

2. Timeline, or AniMate 9even in Lite mode I think it allows you to set key type in Pro). If that won't do the job you need to look at the new Go Figure Key-soemthing product.

3. render time gets written to the log file - Help>Troubleshooting>View log.

4. No, I'm afraid not.

1)  Some of my scenes only have subtle animated effects.  If I want to render the static parts   (Daz's giant forest scene) as a background plate, how do I tell it to render out the masks so I can composite it back in after effects?

*Additional side note to Richard Hazeltines advice:

You may also need to use Matte->Simple Choker (Effects Menu in AE) on the forest foliage to clean it up a bit in your final composite (cleans up the white outline or halo around the tree tops). I had to do this myself several times with this particular model.

I always use Sequenced TIFF format whether I need an alpha channel or not. PNG works just as well though.

-AniMajik*

Thanks for all the help and advice.