CS5 extended and 3d .obj files containing clip maps

Question

Hi,
I've modeled some 3d vines using a standalone program that outputs .obj files. I would like to export some .pngs with transparent backgrounds for use in my 3d program (sketchup) - the 3d vines are a great deal of geometry I don't need except in one or two areas. Photoshop reads them in just fine, but as the leaves are clip mapped textures, it's creating some issues.
by default, it looks like this:
As you can see, the clip maps are rendering as opaque. I fiddled with the rendering settings and discovered that if I set the face style to "constant", it gets a little better:
The clip maps are rendering as transparent, but the bits of leaves that are behind other leaves' clipmaps are obscured and rendered totally transparent, as if the front clipmap punched a hole through everything behind it. It also looks like this if I save as a .png or rasterize the 3d object.
But what I noticed is, when orbiting the camera, it looks correct while the mouse button is held down! like this:
After I got frustrated a bit, I decided to just take a screenshot on a white background while orbiting - but that didn't work. in that scenario, it always looks like the second example above.
Arrrrrgh. Any ideas? have a deadline coming up and would like to have these in the model by then.

Answer 1

Does it get any better if you choose Ray Traced Final under Quality?
MTSTUNER