Cutting holes with 3Ds Max & Vray?

[tomandersson9090694031]

Okey, first some mandatory excuses: I`m new to 3Ds Max and Vray.
And here goes my second one: I`m actually a soundproducer trying to broaden my skills.


So, I`m trying to make a cracked hole in a metalgrill.
The holes in the metalgrill is supposed to be "see through" naturally, and then I want a big cracked
hole in this "see through" grill. Easy, right? Nope!


I make a plane adding a vray material with the black & white grill material in the opacity slot.
The plane makes a perfectly tranparent grill. But how to make this cracked hole in this partly
transparent grill? I have the "crack" as black & white image (the crack is black and the outside white).
I try to mix these guys using composit-map or Vrayblend material. Close but no cigar.
Either the crack appears as a label on top of the grill or the crack-hole is there but no grill.


What am I missing here?


/Tom

EDIT:
Okey, I fixed it with Boolean. But it would`ve been nice to learn how to do it with mattes.

[rbcameron1]

Like a transparency map? Do you have a photo you can add in case others can't follow your description?