I’ve made a transparent effect using Ztransp and some black letters . I upped the myst in the scene, and put a powerful light behind the letters to create what I thought would be a “rays” effect where the light shines through the letters producing light rays traveling through the scene from the letters.
I doesn’t work.:mad:
Perhaps I’m misunderstood on the functions or limitations of these elements which I’ve chosen to use. Any suggestions?
Are you using a spotlight with halo turned on.
Tried that but let me try again. Thanks. Any other ideas?
Does it matter how my textures are stacked? If I can see through it shouldn’t that be enough?
Not sure what effect you are after , take a look here link > http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Volumetric_Halos
but if you after light passing through the object i think you might be getting into caustic’s which cant be done with the blender renderer but you can use yafray.
To get this effect with a halo spotlight, make sure your Halo Step (select lamp, F5) is turned up, probably at least to 3. You can’t use mist for this – mist is not a true volumetric effect. It’s a cheat made by allowing some of the world color to leak into the foreground.
Ok, I was kind of quick in explaining the prob since I’m trying to do this racing a timeclock.
If I can avoid using Yafray I’d like to because, well, I hate it! 
Ok, so I’ve made a banner that has a UVmapped texture that makes the material look like old parchment.
I placed a grayscale material over it for the more physical aspect of the texture (bumps, etc)
Then I placed a company logo over that and did this:
In Materials: Ztrans: 10
Then in the “Map To” section I turned on the alpha button (its yellow now) and hit “Subtract”.
It is Transparent in that I can see objects I place behind it. The object itself seems to allow spotlighting to pass through the entire thing. The letters, however, do not serve their function in being a “window” to the light rays.
Hopefully this helps. The entire picture is hanging on this effect. 
Thanks, I’ll try that too. Thanks for the Myst tip too.