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I have two planes with the same node setup, but only one of them is transparent in Material Viewport Shading.

enter image description here

The one that works was created by the Import Images as Planes addon. The other plane was created manually and copying the addon's material setup into a new material.

If I set the addon's material to the "bad" plane it works, so the problem is related to the material itself (nor the object, OPGL or my hardware). I'm working on 2.73.

I have no clue about this behavior, here is the .blend for checking it out.

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  • $\begingroup$ I'm going to work in some camera mapping videos soon and having this working is mandatory for checking the camera animation in real time. Importing Image as Planes is not a solution, I need to be able to set up the material myself for every meshes which are going to have the projection. $\endgroup$
    – Antonio Buch
    Jan 24, 2015 at 13:12
  • $\begingroup$ @stacker It's weird. I'm on 2.73 too... Just checked on two other PC's. One is AMD but both are NVIDIA. $\endgroup$
    – Antonio Buch
    Jan 24, 2015 at 13:17
  • $\begingroup$ sorry I misread the question, I thought viewport shading set to rendered. $\endgroup$
    – stacker
    Jan 24, 2015 at 13:36
  • $\begingroup$ I meant AMD CPU! :P $\endgroup$
    – Antonio Buch
    Jan 24, 2015 at 13:47
  • $\begingroup$ @AntonioBuch it does look like a bug. I tried with different image and got the same result: recreating the material I couldn't see transparency. When using import images as planes I could... $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Jan 24, 2015 at 16:17

2 Answers 2

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Version 2.76 and after:

See TimCollinsMedia's answer

Prior to version 2.76:

This is highly illogical and probably should not effect the display at all, but the setting that makes those two differ is "Alpha blend" in Blender game engine material settings.

Change the rendering engine to "Blender Game", and change this setting from "opaque" to "Alpha blend" in the material settings, then change back to cycles.

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ How did you figure this out?... very strange indeed $\endgroup$
    – user1853
    Jan 25, 2015 at 7:23
  • $\begingroup$ but he says its cycles $\endgroup$
    – Shaiq
    Jan 25, 2015 at 18:00
  • $\begingroup$ @Shaiq This is in the viewport (OpenGL), and I guess some obscure OpenGL settings are affecting the way it draws. hjaarnio Nice detective work, +1 :). Perhaps this will be fixed with the upcoming OpenGL overhaul. $\endgroup$
    – gandalf3 ♦
    Jan 25, 2015 at 20:10
  • $\begingroup$ Is it possible to #tag users here since this is likely the guy who will be repairing this issue. blender.stackexchange.com/users/465/psy-fi $\endgroup$
    – MarcClintDion
    Jan 26, 2015 at 3:29
  • $\begingroup$ I guess I should have tried it before asking #psy-fi Let's see if it summons him. $\endgroup$
    – MarcClintDion
    Jan 26, 2015 at 3:29
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I think I've figured this issue out. I'm in Blender Cycles.

To see the transparency, make sure you're in the "Material" view in your viewport.

With your image-plane selected, go to the Material tab.

Toggle down "Settings" at the very bottom. Make sure "Viewport Alpha:" is set to something other than "Opaque". I find "Alpha Clip" and "Alpha Blend" worked well for the .png image I was using.

Hopefully this answers your question.

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    $\begingroup$ This answer is quite right and it's actually the method I use. Though, at the moment of my question, @hjaarnio 's answer was the correct one. I don't know if I must change the question itself to specify that it is a query concerning to 2.73 version. $\endgroup$
    – Antonio Buch
    Feb 13, 2016 at 10:36

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