If it helps, in Maya you can x-ray per object, instead of the default x-ray the whole scene or not. So by setting that to a keyboard shortcut (I use ctrl-alt-x, alt-x being the whole scene) you could x-ray your mesh whenever you want, on the fly, while keeping your ref plane opaque. Here's the dirty mel I've been using to…
You can instance your object, move it out of the way, apply a lambert and model on this, while keeping the other instance transparent and aligned over reference.
Is there anyway to apply one material to the object in one view-port and a different material in a different view-port? or have x-ray mode only effect specific meshes? what I'm trying to do: In persp mode I want the mesh to have a normal lambert so I can see the model easily for modelling, but in my side view-port I want…