Invert Mask - for complex camera moving animation

Hi there all, long time member, but thought Flash Kit died so have been elsewhere, but I'll test and see if I get any answers to this.

I'm wanting to render this character as a flash animation (which i will create with swift 3d), could I make the walls of this corridor mask him so that only his head would only be seen as he walked through it, as below?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...y/3d/mask1.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...y/3d/mask2.jpg

I would later render the animation of walls as normal like so http://www.twistedpancreas.com/cedir...lkThrough.html (so that i would have a vector character walking through a bitmap corridor, you may ask why i want to do that, and that's because later on the character will be mainly animating on a still background and i'm trying to conserve download time for the Flash file).

I hope that make sense and thanks in advance.

ok you're gonna need to do three renders.
first render;
a) make the dude transparent
b) render out the entire animation (dude, scene, everything) as ravix (.swft)
c) import to flash and get rid of everything except the transparent layer
d) this should serve as your mask

second render;
a) render just the dude (not transparent)
b) import to flash
c) make sure it is masked by render one

third render;
a) render everything except the dude
b) import it to flash and place it below the first two layers

Thanks BlinkOk,

you're about the first person to give me a decent suggestion on the whole web :)

ok i tried your suggestion and then realised I needed Flash 8 on a mac for the Importer (lucky I still have that here at work).

Then when I rendered out a frame of the animation it came out like this in Flash...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...3d/render1.jpg

Unfortunately it's only showing a slither of the character as he walks in between the walls.

So I tried a second render where I didn't have the character invisible at all and it's getting closer but for some reason rendering the seat and bed in the (Motion) layer!!! Weird.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...3d/render2.jpg

But you're idea is great (if only that stupid seat and bed wouldn't render), better than my idea where I was going to render the foreground then the character (as vector) and then the background which is kinda hard when the camera moves in 3d space. Do you have any suggestions why the chair and bed would be rendered in that layer if they're not animated?

NOTE!!: be careful when rendering out just one frame. always try and render out 3 or 4 frames to make sure the motion stuff kicks in

a) try setting the characters material to say 50% transparent and see what that does
a1) also try and make the fg wall and the bg wall separate objects
b) if the seat and bed render the just set them to hidden (however that wiil not wirk when the camera is moving)
if you want you can mail me the .t3d and i can see if i can fgure it out. (ajblinco AT bigpond DOT com)

You sir are a legend.

And a fellow aussie too by the looks of your email address.

The 50% transparency seems the way to go (which beats me why).

Thanks a million for that and i'll definitely give Flashkit another burl next time i have another question.