UV Mapping Problem
 

Here's the problem: when I attach a material to a model I've already mapped the UVs for, Maya puts a black mask over any area on the texture that doesn't have any UVs on it. Unfortunately in a few spots (along the borders of UV shells) the black is creeping in and appearing on my model. Since Maya does this automatically, I don't know how to fix it. Is there some way to turn this off? (I'm using Maya 6.0 for Mac).
Sorry if this is a very simple question (I ran a search and couldn't find an answer).
Thanks

when you painted your texture, did you overlap the uvs and paint into sections where there wasn't any geometry mapped?

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by overlap the UVs, but I did paint well past the edges of the mapped UV's. The problem isn't that the painted area of the texture file ends short of the mapped area, it's with that black mask Maya automatically puts over the area around the UVs when the material file is attached to a mapped object.
The only place you see it is in the UV Texture Editor (and occasionaly on the model-like in this instance)

hmm. i've never experienced a black mask from maya... (either that or i've never noticed it before *shrug*)

could there possibly be an alpha map on your texture file that you're not aware of?

Someone at High end 3D told me it's just something the Texture editor does and only appears in hardware renders (Duh, oops).
Anyway thx for the help.