Of course there is nothing wrong with the use of alpha planes, and you integrated yours well with the Vue elements. I think the mistake you made was in not stating clearly in your original post that the dominant feature of the image was an alpha plane, although it was pretty obvious that this was so. I haven't looked back at the comments, but this may have been what led some to think maybe you had tried to pass it off as a model of your own creation. I didn't personally read it that way, but I guess it was open to such interpretation.