Rendering out vertex colors

[A_GAME]

Hey I'm building this video games environment which I have to make renders for. The problem is that id doesn't seem to render out vertex coloring. Is there any way around this? Right now the grass texture is a duplicated mesh on top of the rock texture. I painted out some of the vertices to break up the rock texture, but as you can see below, it does not show up in the rendering. Help me pleez :(
(pic related)
(top is alpha coloring in maya viewport, bottom is the render)
http://i306.photobucket.com/albums/nn273/austinissotheman/alpha_render_help.gif

[dabu]

I think vertex color and render are complete opposites... not sure what the answer is... could try a second uv set with a layered shader, like Granda did on his thesis environment...