Thank you Gilles for the tip. Yes I am talking about depth of field. I currently don't have a copy of After effects, but I guess I could let the computer run all night. I'm estimating 5 to 8 hours for 15 sec. at HD Quality.

It seems that when I apply z depth of field that my render times are vastly increased. #1 Is this normal and #2 is there a way to work around this. I'm moving into a scene with a lot of moving firefly lights and wanted to use z depth to create the illusion of passing by them. I already have the path...

Great website slowtiger. Thanks

Thanks GCharb,

I found your video on Youtube. Great info.

Great, thanks jonbo and slowtiger.

I looked into the link you sent me, but I couldn't open up the text file. So I would simply copy the butterfly layer switch group and enable each wing to mask it? Can I do this: I already have an action for the butterfly, can I copy the action to create this or do I have to recreate it from scratch ...

I have a lit object (Butterfly that is glowing) on a path that is moving over a dark background which also has a daytime background underneath. Is it possible to create a moving mask, that matches the butterfly's path, so I see the lit background underneath. I have seen the example of a still mask, ...

Thanks for the advise and you are right I need a downward stroke on the wings. I'll change up the colors too. Great example by the way.

Thanks for the tips and advise everyone.

I heard that it could be done, but when I looked into it, it didn't look promising. I am still learning the program so I could of misunderstood. How does it work?

(There will be 3 to 5 butterflies running across the video at the same time in the final version.)

Thanks Everyone. Here is a test of the wing animation. This isn't the real background image, which will a have more moving parts, but it does give you a good idea of the effect I was going for. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s82MQ5-RMj4 The video will be up for about a week. It's not really the qual...

I'll try mixing it up in the flight. Thanks.

That is a great example. Thank you so much for explaining that. I am using png files from a real butterfly so I'm going to try the blur motion and cut down the number of wings for a test.

You are correct. It is a millisecond. I didn't explain it correctly.

I know it may sound strange but here is a clip from the program 0:0 0 :04. The 0 in bold is one second or one frame. The animation runs at :04 th of a second rate. Weird right. I know I'm asking too much, but thank you for your time. This helps me a lot as to the capabilities of the program. Thank y...