I have tried for hours to find out why the vertexpaint using the alpha channel
shows ice on the entire mesh for white and black areas. After too many tests i
found if i take a old working mesh that had a working ice effect and attach
that to a new mesh then delete the old mesh it works. This means adding a
vertexpaint to any new mesh will never work. I assume something has changed as
my older mesh works. Please advice as i am not confused on how this works.
Thanks.
UPDATE: I may have finally figure this out. I need to make sure the vertex
color is fully white. Then remove this channel. Doing some more testing.
@boris, We users of 3DS have an issue with Vertex paint, which fails to apply
the alpha unless you do a trick first with the Vertex pain color channel, this
is an issue of 3DS which was mentioned in the SDK before, it seems this
reference and warning has been removed from the SDK documentation, and when I
click the link where the instructions to bypass this bug were explained, it is
going nowhere.
with 3DS Max, could you guys put the documentation again? I have been trying
to figure out with Momo this issue because I did remembered from the
documentation, I wanted to give him the steps but we both discovered it was
removed from the SDK. Thanks, Raul
@Nocturne can you check this please 
UPDATE: After testing 3 different tests this is my results. You can add 2
modifiers a vertex color and vertex alpha and it works. Or add both modifiers
convert to poly then just re add the vertex alpha and this will work each time
after. But if you just add vertex alpha it will NEVER work.
Having revised the situation it seems that this issue is indeed still present
and so the “notes on vertex alpha” section has been re-added into the
documentation. I was mistaken in thinking that it had been resolved, which is
why it was initially removed. Sorry for any inconvenience that this may have
caused, and the note will be available again in the SU10 documentation when
that update goes live.