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Object Transparency


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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Unfortunately, there is currently no way of doing this. Meshes are either visible or they are not.

 

Vision 2018 had transparency, but it was never quite implemented correctly (although it kind of worked for simpler meshes).
If you happen to have a dongle for Vision, you can fall back to the older release if necessary. (Serial numbers were not implemented in 2018.)

 

Vision 2019 introduced a new rendering technique to drastically improve performance. The cost of this was not having transparency.
It can still be done with quite a bit of elbow grease, but it has fallen down the priority list.

 

If you need part of an object to be invisible but not the entire thing, transparency/alpha masks can be used.
This is helpful for things like plants, chain links, and other odd ball things; using them for truss is an interesting use case.

 

I'll make sure to bring this thread up in our meetings and let the team know transparency is catching on!

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Of course!

 

If you are using 2020 SP2 VW and Vision, we just got renderworks transparency images coming over via MVR. So, simply assign an image shader to the renderworks texture transparency. Export an MVR and open with Vision.

 

Alternatively, this can be done inside of Vision. Each mesh has a Material grouping in the Properties Window. Under Materials is all of the different image textures; one of which is Alpha Texture (this aligns with VW's transparency image shader).

 

For a good example of this, please load up the Sponza Demo file and inspect the chain links and the foliage 😉

 

 

 

EDIT: I realize the above statement is somewhat confusing or misleading. As of the time of this edit, Vision does not support actual transparency or translucency. We support alpha masking, which is a technique often used to reduce polygon counts. Artistically, alpha masks can be used in unconventional ways to sometimes achieve the desired look. But other times, for example glass, there is no workaround.

Edited by bbudzon
Clarifications
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