If I use a black & white only transparency map to, for example, chop away a piece of garment, the sketch renderer appears to render the whole garment at the highest transparency. i.e. a garment that is visible and opaque in a normal render but has a couple of holes cut out of it, becomes entirely transparent in the sketch renderer. Is there some way around this problem? Am I missing something? Is it a bug? regards and TIA for any help you might be able to offer.

The sketch renderer does have it's limitations and it doesn't render the way the normal rendering engine does. SO......here's a suggestion: Render (using the 'normal' render) an image of your transparencies set to how you like them. Save the image. Create a new scene and import your image as a background. Then sketch render just the background image with no 3D objects. The sketch renderer works well on background pictures. BTW this is a great technique for applying the sketch settings to any picture and can make digital photographs look like paintings.... Krel

The sketch renderer's output changes as the preview mode is varied. It therefore seems to me that it just takes what it sees in the preview window and applies filters to that. If this is so, then it seems a very strange design decision that it cannot take a final render bitmap and apply the same filters. But I'd be happy to be dissuaded from this view. :) regards

Okay, here's my biiiig secret for doing transparencies in sketch renders.. (it's similar to Krel's, but with one less step.) Render your figure using the normal renderer. This will give you an image with all of the correct transparencies. Make sure you render in the display window, not to a new document. Then, with the rendered image still showing, under "Display" select "Paste to Background." Once that's done, move the figure(s) out of camera range until there are no actual 3D objects left in the camera view, just the pasted render. Then run the sketch renderer on the pasted image. Works like a charm. ;-> (I tell you, that sketch renderer is good enough to retail as a stand-alone application.) -Nemo