Does anyone know how to make the geometry see-thru in the viewport so that i can see something behind it, say a reference? :roll:

Cheers

Would turning on the Xray flag on the object behind it work? Right-click on the object and choose Toggle: Xray.

Wow thanks a lot Edward! It's not really what I wanted though! But I'm sure it'll come in handy sometime.

Okay, I'm not sure if this can be done in Houdini, but is there a way to actually turn the geometry into transparent / see-thru mode in viewport, X-Ray is kinda the other way around, at the moment I use display image background for my references, and I want to see my reference as I'm modeling it.

For those who knows 3ds max, it's the ‘Alt + X’ shorcut equivalent that I'm looking for. :wink:

Thanks in Advance!

I'm gonna need your help quite a lot guys, cause I've really just started learning Houdini like a week ago! ops:

Stick a VEX clay shader onto your object then in the viewport hit “d” to bring up display parameters, on the misc tab turn on transparency. Then in your clay shader in the OpenGl tab turn down the alpha from 1.

Note to Sesi: it would be nice if this option was on the object tab as well so that it was more obvious.

Another good tip for poly surfaces is to add an ends sop with unroll U on. That way polys are always drawn as lines even in shaded mode.

Thanks dude, you rock! :wink:
This is what I'm after, by the way, when I tried to change the diffuse color, it just popped back to the default color, any way to change it? :wink:

hey xenoz,

i'm assuming you are trying to change the diffuse parameters in the opengl tab.. the reason why it keeps snapping back is because they are being referenced to the parameters in the “Parms” tab. This is going to be pretty consistent with the built in shaders in houdini. There will always be an opengl tab that should reflect the regular parameters of the shader itself. You can tell that they are being referenced because of the highlight green.

The reason for all this is because you setup your shaders based how you would want them to render.. so by referencing them in your opengl, you can get an interactive simple idea of how things look right there in the gl itself. So in your case, you would want to change your diffuse in the “Parms” tab. this is the color it will render at and it will automatically be updated in the opengl tab, thus reflecting it in your interactive view..

Hi deecue, Thanks a lot buddy! I've just realised that was an embarassing question actually ops: But then again, you always learn something new, right! So thanks for explaining, it really helps me understanding Houdini more!

You know what, I think it's easier to learn Houdini for someone without any 3D experience in particular software compared to the ones who's got experiences in other 3D packages. Cause in my case, I'm like full of questions about how things are done in Houdini rather than thinking what Houdini can do! :wink: