Faking a grille with textues.

[Gnome]

Is it possible to use a texture to make a grille in GMAX?
I'm trying to cut down on polys and am wondering if I can paint the grille and then have the rest of the texture map transparent.

So far, I have not had any success with part transparent textures at all and don't even know how to get a decent animated blurred prop either.  :-/

Thanks.