Rendering transparent backgrounds?

[architect]

I have been working on max6 for about 3 months and am designing a simple little site for fun. the attached image is a simple version of the design and I would like to animate the sphere in the foreground to spin. Is it possible to render the spinning with a transpartent background? I have After Effects if needed, but can't see to figure out any solution other than rendering seperate frames and linking them together as a .gif or the like.

Thanks

[novoAlias]

in flash you can simply use alpha chanells, you can do the same in photoshop but not for a realtime site. i think it is possible to program an alpha effect in CSS or a similar scripting language but without a html editor or knowledge of scripting i dont think you can overlay one image over another for that effect.

[architect]

Awesome. I have flash but have never bothered to invest the time into learning to use it. It's at the top of my list now. Thank you very much!

[prithvi]

Well, you can render your frames in 3Ds Max as Targa images (.tga). and then import them in Flash.
Flash supports .tga image import.

Also, I am assuming that your entire site is in Flash (the background that you've shown above, that is).
If not, (i.e. if your site is in html and you want to show the spinning sphere in Flash on top of your page, then you can export the Flash .swf file using the 'transparent Window mode' from the W-mode options in the Publish settings.

[architect]

Sweet. I read into alpha chanels and using the "transparent window mode" and have discovered a few good ways to get the effect I want. Thanks guys, I would have never found these resources without ya.