Hi Bryghtness, You probably already know that Carrara has a very particular way to handle transparency . For more explainations, go to the files section of the Carrara group on Yahoo, there are some tips by Antoine Clappier there wich all Carrara users have to read and understand . To show you how to have a good transparent shader, have a look at this screen capture . It's the shader tree of my chains shader ( you can grab it on my site ) . It's basically a multi-channel mixer . The transparent areas are created by mixing the regular chain shader (highlighted) and a single shannel set to full transparency, with a transparency map . I've used a texture for the transmap, but i could have used a procedural shader aswell . This is the best way to have a good, clean shader with transparent areas in Carrara, i think . Hope this helps ! litst litst.@freesbee.fr http://www.chez.com/litst/