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I'm working on marine gun turret model and trying to use its drawing/blueprint image to make 3d model more accurate. Blender wireframe view mode is great for modelling but when I switching to it the plane mesh with brawing/blueprint texture also switches to wireframe and texture disappears of course: enter image description here

And when I switch to wireframe I see the following: enter image description here

I know about 'Maximum Draw Type' object settings and I probably can set Gun model to 'Wireframe' maximum draw type and don't touch viewport display mode. But somethimes it is better to see gun model in solid mode and sometimes in wireframe. So I need something like 'Minimum draw type' and apply it to gun image plane behind the gun model i'm modelling. Can I do it with Blender? Thanks in advance.

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  • $\begingroup$ Do you use image imported as plane to preview the blueprint ? $\endgroup$ – Mr Zak Nov 27 '16 at 16:33
  • $\begingroup$ It is a plane with material. Texture assigned to material and plane appropriately UV unwrapped to take all UV space $\endgroup$ – Shoar Nov 27 '16 at 16:38
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As you use the unwrapped plane with image texture (or image imported with Images As Planes addon) to show as the reference, it will lose effects from the Solid shading mode because the plane is a mesh and will behave exactly the same as the one you're modeling. So while changing shading mode to Wireframe no image will be visible.

Use background images instead; they don't depend on shading mode. Note that they will appear only in preset orthographic views, however those should be used for precision modeling anyway.
It's also possible to use an empty of Image type (Shift+A > Empty > Image) which can be useful as reference image. It doesn't depend neither on shading modes nor on ortho views.

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    $\begingroup$ @cegaton I checked the Images As Planes but didn't remember about empty. Thanks for adding that. $\endgroup$ – Mr Zak Nov 27 '16 at 17:16
  • $\begingroup$ Both answers are solving the problem. Personally I will use Empty image solution as it is more flexible and gives more freedom. Thanks for your help. $\endgroup$ – Shoar Nov 27 '16 at 17:22

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