Science behind fences

I think I can finally ask a difficult question on this site. Okay, what I’m trying to make is a fence. What I did was brought a seamless fence into GIMP where I cut out the holes like so…


The background used to be black but like I said, i cut out each and every opening. I then imported the picture into Blenders texture. I adjusted the x and y until I was happy with the size of the fence. This is the result.


Two questions:
1: Is there a way to darken the fence itself to make it stand out more through Blender or should I go back into GIMP, desaturate and adjust brightness and contrast?

2: Is there a way to keep the fence there and make the plane I placed it on not there? Maybe by messing with the transparency?

Is this the right path or is there an easier way?

Attachments


there is an OLS shader to do fences / chainmail

ttp://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?275094-A-chainlink-fence-OSL-shader-for-Blender-Cycles&p=2259865&viewfull=1#post2259865

happy cycles

if you saved as a .png then use the alpha channel of the picture as the trans map, is lots of tuts showing how far better then I can