Hi,
I batch rendered a sceen where I attached a dirrectional emitter (Cloud) to a missle and nothing came out when I rendered it in a AVI file.  I this something with AVI renders or something I didn’t set right?  Though the rest of the movie looks nice and all that (I am a bit biased, as it took me 24 hours to model and animate) I would still like to see the missile plume and maybe I’ll add an explosion to the wall where the missile hits.

Thank you

your using software render right?
i wanna see it

yes I am using software render.  why would the particles not be showing up?  there is no way that I could email you the AVI file...its over 500MB for a 30 second video is this crazy or what? Thanks for the interest though. 
But back to the problem.  What could I be leaving out either in the render prefs or the particle artibutes?  I would love to see the missile plume even if it is just a simple orange plume and not a fire effect or smoke effect.
Thank you

ARGGGG… just read the maya help and found out that I have to add a Light to the sceen in order for the particles to render.  Also have to add a particle shader...dont know how to add the shader....maybe my teacher will help me on this last part.

Now I’ve got a question that probably should be in the Lighting-Rendering section but…
I have made a sphere to be the sky...I scaled it up to something like 500 radius. 
Should I make a volume light to act as the sun to replace the default light?
And should I attach a point light to the missile itself?