I recieved Bryce 4 as a gift a while back and have been learning the program. Since reading books always gets me lost, and all the info tends to run together, I'm a hands on-figure it out as I go- type. I recently began importing images into the program via the "edit 2D pictures" feature. In this case I loaded an image of a black cat created in Paint Shop Pro 6. I load the image into the first two places and turn the second negative. When I paste the composite the cat looks great. Until I place an object or a light color sky behind it. Then it's painfully obvious that the image of the cat is semi transparent. How do I get it so that the cat is solid? Thanks folks!

In your editor just move the transparency dot off the columns and onto the control bar and set your transparency to 0. I don't the correct names to use so this might sound goofy.

Assuming you mean you want only the cat to show (the rest of the image you would like to be transparent)... when you load the picture lab, Im sure you have noticed the little guy called "leo". If you look at it you can see that the 3rd window shows only leo, and the rest has a "checkered" appearance. This indicates that the "checkered" part can be affected by the alpha channel. Now if you look at the 2nd window (this is the alpha channel) you will notice that it is a Black and white image... therefore, going by the example given you, you should be able to see that you need to create a black and white "mask" for your picture. White for the cat, black for everything else. Once you load the cat picture into window1 and the black/white mask into window #2 you will have only the cat rendered and the rest will be transparent. last, if you encounter a problem whereby you can still see a "haze" in the area that should be transparent, you should check the option "blend transparency" that is in the material lab (its in a menu that will appear when you click the small triangle immediately to the left of the top right of the material lab) I recently put up a tutorial about the 2d picture lab that might be of some use...check it out for a more graphical description on how to play in the 2d picture lab... http://www.brycetech.com/tutor/bryce/2d1.html good luck Brycetech