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OpenGL view: is there any way not to show textures but still show transparency?


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For editing and for early-stage models, when working in OpenGL perspective views, I like to turn textures off (under "OpenGL Options"), because I find them distracting when working on the basic geometry.

 

However, this makes any material that should be transparent, like glass in windows, appear solid, which is not what I want most of the time. Also, it means I can't really use this mode for creating quick presentation images and so on.

 

One workaround is to give the objects that I want to appear transparent "no fill". That works in the basic OpenGL view but it then means that textures aren't applied if I switch them on or do a rendering.

 

I control materials by class. When I edit a class, in the "Graphic Attributes" dialogue, under the "fill" options I can adjust opacity. This ought to so what I want, but it doesn't seem to have any effect in OpenGL view.

 

Am I missing something?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Correct, there are a number of wishes in related to this at the moment. Often I just disable Color from OpenGL instead of texture to get clear windows and still have gray geometry, but that mainly works because I only give objects 3D attributes via textures and not via solid fill attributes.

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3 hours ago, JimW said:

Correct, there are a number of wishes in related to this at the moment. Often I just disable Color from OpenGL instead of texture to get clear windows and still have gray geometry, but that mainly works because I only give objects 3D attributes via textures and not via solid fill attributes.

 

So, what does that "fill opacity" slider actually do?

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3 hours ago, JimW said:

Correct, there are a number of wishes in related to this at the moment. Often I just disable Color from OpenGL instead of texture to get clear windows and still have gray geometry,

 

Have just tried this and I see that disabling colour:

- does remove colour

- does remove the image maps associated with the textures (whereas you might expect that it would make them greyscale)

- doesn't remove the transparency associated with the textures

 

As ever with VW not exactly intuitive but useful to know.

 

The reason I like to have the colours on is that I find it makes models more legible whilst working on them - provides distinction between materials (or whatever you use your classes to control) without the distraction of the tiled image maps, which can make edges hard to see.

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