m. behr, in the advanced material editor, in the color&alpha tab it should say if you your object uses a mapped picture or  procedural colors. If its a mapped picture it will specify underneath which file its using for the map. Find the file on your disk, edit (a copy of) it and generate a transparancy map. The easiest way to import this transp map back to vue is in the basic material editor - load it up as a 'alpha map'.

"I paint that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
Man Ray, modernist painter
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