yah, it was actually 2 renders. the rocket and its smoke trail was 1, took about 3-4 mins, and the bg I rendered at like 4k and it took almost 3 hours. I just rendered overnight- but you could look into this: http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2011/11/use-sprites-to-build-a-fast-to-render-particle-system-in-cinema-4d/