Hi trying to create a forest scene and for the back ground I thorght I'd use some 2d 'flat' planes with a treepicture from a clipart cd on it. so far so good saved the pic as a tif or a bmp and applied it to the plane now I need a trans mask I think so changed pic to greyscale and fiddled with contrast. problem is ok this works but all I get is a washed out ghost of a tree all grey no colour what am I doing wrong or to put another way could you tell me the best way of doing this. thanks for any help Dave