Rendering Help!
 

Can someone anyone help me. How can I render an image of a character, that can be placed over a background. I guess its a alpha image.

Go into Render Globals and tick the box that says "Alpha Channel (Mask)" in the image output settings.

Don't forget to render the image to a file format that supports an Alpha channel, i.e. IFF or Targa.

I personally use Targa because I can open the file(s) in Photoshop, After Effects and Premiere without any problems.

There may be other file formats that support an Alpha but I'm not behind Maya right now.