Switch Between Material Opacity 100% and ?%

Playdo

When I'm modeling off of blueprints, I'm constantly finding myself changing the material's opacity back and forth so I can see the blueprints when modeling (?%) and so I can see the form better (at 100%). Wireframe mode would be useful but the blueprints disappear when in this.

Does anyone know a quick way to switch the material's opacity back and forth without having to change it in the material editor? An opacity hotkey like you have in photoshop would be useful.

Eric Chadwick

Have you tried alt-x ?

kdm3d

alt-x would switch the entire scene. no?

one thing I've seen done is setting your material to animate. Frame 0 is 100% opacity, and frame 1 is ?% opacity. then you can just slide your frame over one for the transparent, and back for full.

I believe you can hot key forward and back one frame... I think...

Eric Chadwick

Alt-x only sets the selected mesh to See-Through mode, which is untextured gray and semi-transparent.

Oh, and the default hotkeys for Forward and Back are < and >.

kdm3d

Ah, your right... Its funny, I use it every day, but off the top of my head, I couldn't place it... ah habits...

Playdo

Both great. Alt+X will do me fine. Thanks

Eric Chadwick

Yeah, it's funny, some of them are just rote, machine memory at its best.

Piflik

Put your Ref Planes in a new Layer and set te Layer's Shading Mode to Shaded...that way the Blueprints will stay shaded, even when you switch the Viewport to Wireframe.

kodde

I'm supposing you're all talking Max right?

Here's a nice tip that I use in Maya, should work the same in 3DSMax.
Keyframe your materials opacity, use the timeslider as your virtal opacity slider. Set your opacity to whatever you want at that point in time, quickly and easily.

kdm3d

kodde wrote: »

I'm supposing you're all talking Max right?

Here's a nice tip that I use in Maya, should work the same in 3DSMax.
Keyframe your materials opacity, use the timeslider as your virtal opacity slider. Set your opacity to whatever you want at that point in time, quickly and easily.

hmmm... why didn't someone think of that

kodde

kdm3d wrote: »

hmmm... why didn't someone think of that

Someone did... a long time ago. Then they informed me and a couple of other highly trusted associates of mine (classmates). They also decided that this secret would be best kept only among us privileged ones and it was therefor best to not inform the rest of the world (you).

That is until this lucky day of yours.

Eric Chadwick

Heheh, kdm3d mentioned it earlier in the thread.

Piflik

I think he was refering to this

kdm3d wrote: »

one thing I've seen done is setting your material to animate. Frame 0 is 100% opacity, and frame 1 is ?% opacity. then you can just slide your frame over one for the transparent, and back for full.

kodde

Aw man... and I thought I was the man. Coulda sworn I had checked the thread for this possibility in advance. T_T