Hi. I posted this on the Daz Forum as well. I own Carrara 5 Pro and have used it off and on for a while. I was wondering if it is possible to animate a series of images on a 2d plane and use masking to make part of the 2d plane transparent. I know in Bryce you can use masking to make sections of the 2d image projected on the plane transparent. Basically, if this works I'm planning to use it to create various effects, fire, smoke, snow, etc, in either Particle Illusion or Cinema 4d and layer them into my scene for animation, as I find Carrara the easiest program to use for animation (next to Bryce). Also I am torn about upgrading to 6 Pro. Is the Dynamic hair easier to use the the Cinema 4D hair module as I have been having a hard time getting it to work. Will Dynamic hair in C6PRO work with Toon shading, either the build in one or the Toon Pro Plugin? And finally, is it possible to render out separate layers of the scene (static or animated) to be mixed manually in Photoshop (in either version)? Thank you for all the help and advice. Sincerely, David Lein P.S. Bwtr thanks for your response