Hi there,

sorry I posted the problem here, because I think th basics & newbie forum is probably the one most people look at.

Ok here's my problem, (see attached picture) I've got my object in space and various particles moving around it. I have to render object and particles in two separate passes for compositing.
The problem I come across when comping is if I render out a matte for my object it will block out all the particles that would usually pass in front of it.
Vice versa if I don't do the matte the particles will not disappear behind my object.
Masking is not an option as there are waaay too many particles. The depth matte plugin in After effects does not work as maya doesn't seem to put the necessary information in my image sequence, so I'm kinda stuck.
My thought was to somehow tell maya that it should only render particles up to a certain distance from the camera (see dividing line in drawing)

If anyone knows of a way how to deal with this I'd be really happy for help.

I'm not sure if shake can do what I need plus I have never used it. But if there is a way with shake and it doesn't require expert knowledge please let me know as well.

thanks guys