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I have been following this grass tutorial using the hair and fur modifier and ran into a problem. I have a number of trees in my scene that are just planes that I have applied a material on to (a bitmap of a tree with an opacity map). when I render, the grass does not show up behind the plane despite the fact that it should be mostly transparent around the tree. I have tried unticking the planes "visible to camera" tickbox in its object properties as well and when rendered it still renders the grass exactly the same. If I change its material to matte/shadow then I lose the tree image and therefore the shadow as well. I am thoroughly confused… is this something to do with the scanline renderer? If anyone has any solutions that would be amazing, thanks I am using 3ds max 2014. Rendering the main image in mental ray and the grass separately in scan line.

I'd like a bit more control over my environment fog. It's a chunky ground layer so I can't just do a Z-depth pass for distance haze. Is there any way to separate it out? Thanks