The material trick with alpha-channel for transparency will do it. Not for s/e, Photorealistic only, for shure, but all other increases 3d model to much.
It is possible to create a real 3D plane with holes, but doing something else than rectangular forms lead to trouble or more decreasing performance.
There are three ways to drill holes into a plane:
- inside the PRISM-command as hole definitions
- with CUTPOLYs
- with SEO operations
All time consuming in built up.