I was following a tutorial at GeekatPlay Studios -- Fall Road.  It coves terrain mapping (I think that's what it's called).

I have Vue 9 Esprit with a couple of added modules - Eco Painter, Botanica.

I don't seem to have the global transparancy option in the materials editor to enable me to map where I want specific materials to be in my scene.

I think I may need the Deep Access module for that. 

Can anyone confirm that for me?

You don't need DeepAccess for this, in the advanced material editor, you have a transparency tab, I'm sure what you need to do can be done from there. Can you be more specifiv about what you need to?

The tutorial is for making a road or track through a forest.  In Photoshop, your create three jpg images which are then used as alpha maps (I think that's the term) to determine where certain materials appear. For example -- you apply a grassy texture to the whole terrain and then use the alpha map to tell it where the sandy texture for the tracks should go.

On the transparancy tab in my Infinite PLE, next to the Global transparency slider, there's a "drive with function" icon, when you click on it, you can tell it which alpha map to use.

The "drive with function" icon isn't there in Esprit so it looks like you can't do that in Esprit.

@jaynep...I have Esprit, too, and go to geekatplay for almost all of my tutorial needs..here are some great tutorials from there that specifically pertain to what it sounds like you're wanting to do ;

http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials/backdrop/

1. Backdrop for your web projects.05/15/2008 Vue 6
    Creating outstanding backdrop for you web interfaces:
   •Large size of terrain with realistic ecosystem.
   •Using Building Construction Kit and Mega Packs.
   •Set up lighting and small post production adjustment.
   http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials2.php

http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials1.php

1. Distribution of materials. Vue 6 and Vue 5
    If you're mixing up the snow and the rocks and the trees and the grass, it can get hard to see what is going on in that preview pain. In this tutorial, we demonstrate an easy way to set up a complex distribution of materials.
   http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials/dm/

http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials4.php

1. Painting materials with Vue 7.4.5/13/2009 Vue 7
    •Looking at new addition in Vue 7.4.
   •Painting materials over terrain.
   •How does painting works
   http://www.geekatplay.com/flvplayer/player.php?pathinfo=materialspainting

http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials6.php

1. Glowing puddles, part two
    •Creating terrain.
   •Function editor adjustments
   •Dependecy

http://www.geekatplay.com/tutorials6.php

1. Glowing puddles, part three
    •Applying materials.
   •Function driving material placement
   •Material layers

http://www.geekatplay.com/vue9/
Introduction to Vue 9, Terrain brushes. []
 •Setting up terrain brushes, managing brushes, and creating terrain with custom brushes.

http://www.geekatplay.com/flvplayer/player_full.php?pathinfo=http://www.vcode.com/tutorialsvue9/brushes.mp4
http://www.geekatplay.com/vue9/
Introduction to Vue 9, Material editor overview. []
 •New interface, advance vs. basic, and expand with function editor

http://www.geekatplay.com/functioneditor/index.php
Function Editor 7- Image maps nodes [15:19]
 •Image maps nodes and controlling transparency in map nodes.

http://www.geekatplay.com/materials/
41 Material and Ecosystem painting [14:32]
 •Exporting painting map, creating multilayer painting, global vs local ecosystem painting tool, and those things in ecosystems

Thanks Mary.  I'm amazed at at sheer number of tutorials etc. at Geek at Play. I'll be spending a lot of time there.

I was playing around last night and was able to create a similar scene to the one in the tutorial I had been following, but I did it by painted the materials and then using the eco-painter module to add an ecosystem to selected areas.

It was looking great until I started playing around with the atmosphere, something got corrupted, it crashed and now the scene won't open :-(

Oh well, win some, lose some.

sorry to hear that,,but a good thing about Vue is that the sun will shine again, at just the click of a button