@bog - I am fairly good with a lot of programs myself but I would never answer someone the way you did. You can put a better way. A much shorter way. "Can you provide more info? It may be that you ate too many twinkies. Here's a link to what we need." <---- Szalam likes twinkies, and that was basically his reply.
Thanks! It's not a 3D set, or 3D Construction, and I am not sure if that is part of AE. Again, I am new to AE. These are painted PNG's I am animating and there is no camera. But maybe the particle systems need a camera in AE for them to be rendered with the final video? Is 3D 'construction' just converting layers to 3d and using a camera?
I also only have 8gig of ram and an older NVIDIA GTX285. Maybe it's choking on rendering out the particles?