Transparency in Carrara is an odd beast. The above can be changed to not be a multichannel mixer. Using just 'multi-channel' - 'color' is the texturemap of the butterfly - 'transparency' is the texturemap of the mask. For this to work properly though the places where they are completely transparent has to be black in BOTH the color and transparency map. This is what I find truely messed up with Carrara as you can't do the following. - 'color' completely white. - 'transparency' is a noise ranging from black to white. I was trying this to simulate clouds but just wouldn't work. You'd have to copy the same noise pattern in the transparency to the color channel to get complete transparency. Problem is that the color no longer is a pure white but shades of gray. Not really what I hoped for. Although seeing the above butterfly I might try again but this time using mutichannel mixer. Transparency shouldn't be this involved though IMO. :/ I asked what the incantations were happening under the hood that this was the case but Eovia never got back to me on that. Anyway, enough of my little rant. :)