I uploaded an edited version with the problem fixed. I've used a blend material that blends between a black standard blinn, and a glow material. with the mask as the opacity map. but I also used an RGB multiply in the glow multiplying the mask over the glowing map. check the file out its kind of hard to explain. Theres probably several other ways to do it to but this seems to work just fine.

[Link to www.mediafire.com]

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Thanks for the reply Tyson! I tried to open the file, but Max won't have any of it. I suspect it's because you are using Max 9? I'm working in Max 2008. Have you seen this type of aberration before? I tried to recreate the effect in another Max file but I just can't replicate it! I've currently got a pretty good result by selecting the text in the opacity map, inverting the selection and then in the diffuse map deleting that selection. So... essentially clipping around the text. I can't quite get my head around the description of your work-around.

Thanks again,
Fin

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yeah Ive got max 2009 here sorry, how annoying is the lack of backwards compatibility. Thats pretty much what i did except I did the clipping in max using an RGB multiply, with rgb multiply you take one image (your colour map) then multiply a second image over it. the black values (0) multiply with the other values and output black, and the white values (1) stay the same). You can just do it in photoshop too of course.
good luck with you're project.

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