First of all thanks for your time and assistance. It's greatly appreciated. I followed your instructions to the best of my ability, maybe I'm denser than I thought I was as what you offered didn't seem very complicated, and still have a problem. I opened Bryce 4 and selected the "2D face vertical." I then went to "edit 2D pictures." In the first (pict image) window I loaded the cat (cat.gif) image. Moving to the second (alpha image) window I tried two different approaches. First I loaded the cat.gif image into the alpha image window and then inverted the alpha image which turned the cat white and the rest of the image black. In the second I returned to PSP6 and created a "transparent" image of the cat.gif image which rendered the same effect as the inversion of the image in the alpha window in Bryce 4, cat white, everything else black. I then saved that image, returned to Bryce, and loaded it intothe alpha window. In both cases, the resulting image in the third (combination image) window is the same. The black cat with the checker board background. In that image however, the checker board is still slightly visible thru the cat. As a result of this, if I then copy the combination image to the 2D vertical, and then create a yellow sphere and place it behind the cat, the sphere is visible thru the image of the cat. Am I missing something? Or is it possible this transparency problem is perhaps rooted in the PSP image itself? Thanks P.S.- By the way. I pasted http://www.brycetech.com/tutor/bryce/2d1.html into my browser and all that loads is a blank page.

Go to the materials editor main page (click on the M of your cat 2d object). Pull down the mapping options (to the right of your parametric selection in A). At the bottom there is something like "2d decal." Select that. It will make the alpha channel work.

hey thanx for catching that white page (see I was transferring the entire site last night and it seems it missed that page...it says 0 kb on the server..dont know why) anyhow...it should be fixed now...try it again... if you still have a problem with the image in Bryce, lemme know :) Brycetech

I had the same problem and, after some experimenting, I found what seams to be another Bryce's bug: When you load your pic by clicking at the top of the first pic and copy&paste to the 2nd chanel, the alpha chanel information losts contrast. You end up with that semi-transparent pic you mentioned. If you load the same pic by clicking at one of the empty pic buttons below it works allright. Funny, isn't it?

BTW, use the pic to drive the transparency and set "blend transparency" mode, otherwise the 2d object will stay visible.

actually, bmp images dont have a true "alpha" channel..thats why you make one with the black and white image. I do think that tif images have the ability to include an automatic 'alpha' channel, but I have never messed with them..

.pict or .pct and .gif can carry alpha channels but Bryce doesn't seem to recognize the alpha channel, so I usually create a separate black and white alpha channel image. This alpha channel problem is a pre 4.1 problem, BTW.

.pct is mac?...all these extensions "mess wid de haid" :) Brycetech

Tif and also tga do carry an alpha channel.

Go to http://www.bryce4all.com/tutorials/what.htm to learn all about different file types.