Help with Max 8

[Master of Cards]

Can you put one animtion in front of another?
and my text is only extuded in the middle

[lPeregrine]

Can you put one animtion in front of another?

Yes, but it'll probably be easier to do this in a video editing program. Render each element with a transparent background, then put them together elsewhere. If you really want to do it in 3dsmax though, you can set a video file as the background image. Render them in order of most distant to closest to camera, then render the next layer using the previous version as the background.

and my text is only extuded in the middle

I have no idea what you mean here. Can you post a screenshot of the problem?

[Master of Cards]

I am getting shutdowns when I render it sometimes too
I am just starting over with that scene but I want one part to go first and then the second first scene black second scene black

How do you make things invisible then visable

[lPeregrine]

I am getting shutdowns when I render it sometimes too

No clue. It shouldn't be crashing mid-render, any errors it's going to cause should happen before reaching that point. The only thing I can think of is heat problems... is it shutting the whole computer down? Rendering stuff will run your CPU at its absolute limit, so if you have bad cooling it might be overloading it.

I am just starting over with that scene but I want one part to go first and then the second first scene black second scene black

Get some video editing software. This is in theory possible to do with 3dsmax only, but it's going to be an awkward workaround. What you're trying to do is the most basic thing possible, so even really cheap software should be able to do it.

How do you make things invisible then visable

Toggle auto-keyframe, set the object visibility to 0 at frame 0, move to the frame you want, set it to 1. Right-click the visibility keyframe, set to the sharpest transition possible (the _|- icon). Or if you want a slow fade-in, put another 0 visibility keyframe where you want to start the fade-in, and set the keyframe properties to one of the gradual transitions.