[Randy Johnson]

Render times are directly related to what is in the scene and there are a thousand ways to optimize your scene. With out seeing the scene its pretty hard to help you out.
Sorry I didnt see your reply to the ground breaking post before now.

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

yep you can with enough time. You can use thinking particles to get the dynamics on the floor and the explosion could be done with Pfragment… or from what I am told
Silver Bullet and PhyTools has amazing dynamics for both those things.

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

Shadow passes dont have alpha they end up bright white..and the shadow. You need to multipy over your other layers.

Also you use a compositing tag on both the object and the floor.

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

The easyest if you are using r.10.5 there is a tutorial on the c4dcafe.com site about LED light animation that would fit this nicely.
Otherwise I would suggest an expresso solution…

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

the link didnt work for me.
So i have copied and pasted from the maxon FAQ: lighting section

Problem
How do you cast a shadow on an plane with only the shadow being visible, not the plane?
Detailed Description

How do you set up a scene so that you can render out a shadow of an object and composite a background image for the shadow to be cast on?
Solution

This is easily accomplished using the Compositing tag (R6/7: Render Tag). Add this tag to any shadow casting object(s) and disable the Seen by Camera option, while making sure Seen by Rays and Cast Shadows options are enabled.

Add a compositing tag to the object containing the background image (a plane works best – background objects won’t work) and activate the Receive Shadows and Compositing Background options.

[Randy Johnson]

here is a tutorial about pipeline to Shake on cineversity. You need to be a member..you can see this tutorial with the free membership.

https://www.cineversity.com/tutorials/lesson.asp?tid=739

And you can use alpha but not with a background object…you need something with geometry.
(Floor objects work too so its kinda strange.)

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

So you know background alpha channel option doesn’t work on a Mac.

I agree with Kenneth image sequences look better.

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

I think in 9.o the flash output was in the Plug Ins drop down menu…
now its not in the render settings but is in the render drop down menu.

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

SHake is a a little difficult to move tracking data from…I use PF HOE pro then I can send the camera to both c4d and shake.

/randy

[Randy Johnson]

you can take that into the alpha chanel in the material…but it is better quality in a compositing package.

/randy