Fence texture
 

Can anyone recommend a simply maya tutorial that specifically goes over setting up transparencies in maya?

What I'm looking to do is create the illusion of a fence by just using a texture...and I want to be able to render this is mental ray. Ive had some help in this in the past with this but I was never able to pull it off. Should I be using a PSD network, do I use alphas, any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

you should be able to just to use a alpha and that's it really simple

I wish it was. Unfortunately my knowledge of the hypershade is lacking, but what I want to do is a black fence. Maya likes to use black as a transparency so this causes issues. I've tried using the reverse node to no avail. Ive tried creating two textures opposite colors and plugging one in the color and the other in the transparency which didnt work either

If you're using an mia_material, then you can just plug a black a white texture into the cutout opacity slot in the advanced section. With a Maya shader, I find that the color, transparency, spec color channels need to be mapped and a bump wouldn't hurt.