for the love of god someone answer this one please
 

ok ive got a job for this one scene where the director of the animation wants this part of a womans dress to be basically like spawns cape, really torn up and flowing. now my question is in order to make cloth look torn and raggedy its just a process of taking out the poly's on the edges right?

you can do that and/or use a transparancy map.

how do i use transperancy maps?

I think there's a free tut here about alpha mapping...