I think it's definitely worth your time learning some mel. Not only does it open up new possibilities for you, it can also speed up your workflow quite a bit. You can't go wrong learning it. Indeed it is, and I have. I normally develop web sites, so I'm not a stranger to scripting in various languages and have been programming for some 20 years now Thing is, it's mostly an isolated case I need this for, and I can't sink too much time into it now or it will cost me more than the client pays Other than that, I've spent quite a lot of time trying to get to grips with it. But as with so many other cases, it's what you produce that is most important, not HOW you produce it. You could always do something like the following. Run it in the script editor. I've modified it from my script here Heya ND, and I did indeed already check out your scripting a bit, but never got it to work properly (the render took just 10-20 seconds, while a proper render took a lot longer - dunno why). Now that I actually have a working solution (a 2-frame animation which moves the camera + turns on/off lights) I can start to experiment a bit more in my spare time (wait, what? no such thing!). Looking at the script, it pretty much looks exactly the same as the one I tried Thanks both of you, Maya has been an eye-opener (shame I can't afford a personal license, would've been fun to just "fiddle about" with) and has definitely created a craving for more. Not to mention that I've started to look at the real world with eyes that look at how light and shadow falls and all that. Work hazard I guess