heyas; i think you're confusing people by using the word 'masking.' what you want to do is used mixed materials in vue. you can mix two (or more) different materials and use a function and/or slope/altitude/azimuth to determine which material goes where. i believe all those tutorials they sent you to explain all that. ;) now, if you want to mix like a glass material and the label on a bottle (like this decal deal) that'd be a lot trickier. but it uses the same principle. you can paint or use an image as the mixing function (the same way you can for transparencies, etc), so you could paint a custom mixing mask for your objects. now when you mix materials, look down on the lower right for the 'blending' amount slider thingy. if you want one material to fade into the other, turn that up. if you want sharp deliniations, turn it down. also check the different mixing methods (cubic bump, flat colour, etc). the bump kind of mixing sometimes give dark black edges to materials -- this occurs when one material overshadows the other quite a bit. you can get rid of that with the blending amount, or switch to a flat mix.