Ok, forgive me for being an idiot. <-- Stop laughing Pete I have tried using alpha planes, have read and followed the tuts but I run into a problem. When I place an alpha plane down and put it in my scene (with the textures applied of course)my alpha planes never render correctly. The way I work I usually turn off all ambiant light on materials and use on the actually scene lighting to light something. The problem I have run into with alpha planes is that if the sun/light source is not shining on the alpha plane then the alpha plane renders very dark. That is my major gripe with alpha planes. I dont like having to turn up the ambiance or lum settings to compensate because to me that destroys the whole point of trying to use real light. So what am I doing incorrectly?