[deflix]

Is there any way of creating a simple self-illuminating material that doesnt act as an emitter. i.e. a background image/landscape on a plane beyond a window?

Thanks

[Bubbaloo]

Self-illuminated by definition means it is emitting light.

Take your background image and load it into mxcl and save as mxi. Create a material with image based emitter and choose your mxi. The drawback to this method is that you pretty much have to use multilight to adjust the amount of illumination you get.