I created a bunch of alpha plane leaves that I scattered over a scene. The scene was fairly dark, with the ambient lighting way down, but when I rendered it, some of the "leaves" had these very bright highlights, like the sparkles on water. I tried adjusting the reflectivity and highlights and so on, but it made no difference. Could it be the fact that the alpha planes (or at least most of them) are flat on the ground in relation to the camera? Or could it have something to do with the fact that I made the mask in PhotoShop instead of directly in Vue? Any ideas would be appreciated.

Hmm,did you set the background absolutely black.I had similar Problems with that in a image.Did you really use alpha planes or did you use a (alpha-)texture on a normal plane?In the last case the cutted out areas are not completely eliminated and may cause reflections on "imaterial"points.

Actually, when I did it in Photoshop, it was black against a white background. I'll try it the other way and make sure about the black. But it was definately an alpha plane.