Can one map an image sequence onto an alpha plane? I'm using Lightwave to render a volcano blast using the particle system, then I plan to map it onto a plane and place it in the crater in Vue. Can this be done?

Yes! Simply have an image sequence - i just tested it with xxx001.jpg, xxx002.jpg, xxx003.jpg... I loaded the first one as image map to the plane. Infinite saw that it is the first of a sequence and asked wether i want to load the whole sequnce. If you answer "yes"....

I did that but the problem is the first few frames are black and it does not seem to pickup the alpha.

Have you tried to load the alpha animation the same way? And are the first frames really colored?

figured it out. If I load a 32 bit tif image sequence the alpha channel does not load, but if I render separate jpg's for the color channel and alpha channel in separate imges, I can load the alpha image sequence independant of the color. This works fine.

tifs with embedded alpha information are weird anyway. Not really standard. So no wonder if that does not work correctly everywhere. However, good that it works!