Hi everybody

Hope this is not a REALY stupid question but here it goes.

Can I use a layer from photoshop in Maya?

I cut out the water out of the world map and I was wondering if I could import the layer in maya and strap it on a transparent sphere so that only the continents are visible.
I red someones thread where you guys suggested using an "alpha channel" for transparency. So (in PS) I put a background layer behind the COB continents, selected it, painted black and created an alpha channel from it, than I assigned it as a file texture on a sphere in maya. Tried a couple of diferent clicks in maya (rgb and alpha channel in the render globals window as well as "alpha luminocyty" in color tab of the file texture atributes) but I must be doing something wrong cause the water still renders black instead of transparent. When I click the alpha channel view, in the render view after rendering, the whole scene turns white. I guess I'm way of course here :-) but before anything else, I had to ask you guys for help.

So, basicly my question is, is what I'm trying to do posible or are we talkin modeling the entire thing from scratch?

Thx ahead