Thanks Mark, at least I got somewhere with that, but I want to orbit with the camera as well as the animation. The only way then I guess is to have identical cameras in the precomp and the main comp, so that the camera in the precomp does the fly-by on the 3d object, and the camera in the main comp does the fly-by on the particles?? Is there any way to link these cameras, or just copy/paste?