i know there are a whole bunch of tutorials out there...i did a quick search of this forum and the newsgroup...some quick questions..i just jumped in and made a quick fly-by rendering of something im working on. 1. does it really speed up rendering times if you minimize the program? 2. does the camera block out the sun when you render an animation? i did a quick rendering by making my camera track an object and just relocated the camera from the first frame to the last.....somewhere in the middle my scene got very dark and i guess it was from the camera blocking out the sun? is that silly or what? 3. i really messed up my camera path? i clicked on show as ribbon and it only had a dot at the beginning and an end (keyframes?) somehow i added another dot in the middle and this allowed me to make sort of a spline shape of the ribbon (camera path?)..but i guess i did something wrong because from the start to the 2nd keyframe it goes along at normal speed but from the 2nd to the end it speeds up very fast....i'm guessing its because i placed this keyframe towards the end of my timeline? (how i did that i dont know) so if you can point me in the right direction of a basic intro help tutorial thingy for getting into nimations...i'd sure appreciate it...i mean a real real basic one :) thanks -michael