I mean animate a door that is open so that it closes towards the viewer from left to right.

The Sony Squeeze FX should be close enough with a bit of work. Change the default to Left or Right and uncheck Squeeze Previous Image.

If you want something that's entirely realist a camera, door and a length of fishing line should do it :)

Bob.

I did the opposite recently. I shot a door opening into another room.

I rendered to a still image sequence of .png files.

In Photoshop, I cut the door opening from each of 27 frames to a transparent background. (It was tedious but quicker than you might think.)

I imported the edited still image sequence back into a Vegas Pro project over a different scene.

Here is a short project file to illustrate.

Open Door Effect

Something like this?

Thanks John for taking the time to put that together.

Thanks, Bob. The problem with having so many effects and not using Vegas on a daily basis is realising and remembering what can do what.

You could also take a picture of a door and animate it with 3D compositing mode.

Thanks. Any links to examples of how to do that? I tried using 3D compositing mode but gave up, setting up accurate anchor points seems impossible.

I was having some problems myself trying to do this but it may have been more because of the picture I chose and masked in two.

It's far from perfect but you could try something like this

Saw this tutorial and remembered this topic

http://johnrofrano.com/training/video-tutorials/3d-track-motion-pivot/

This should make the 3D mode door close method a lot easier.