I work on meshes for games and they often use the vertex colors for shader stuff in unreal. The issue I have is I need to disable the display of the vertex colors on my meshes in houdini because they're obscuring what i need to see.. Or worse.... if the alpha channel is 0, then the entire mesh is invisible and i can't see it at all..

what i normally would do is have an attribute delete node at the start or end of my graph that deletes the vertex colors and then I just have to remember to disable it again before i export, but there's lots of issues with that, such as me forgetting to disable it before i export and i find out weeks later some of my meshes don't have their vertex colors.. gah.

so i'd like a way to leave the vertex colors there but just disable them in teh viewport so i can never corrupt my meshes on accident. The best i've found is that if you enable the MATCAP viewport mode, that won't show vertex colors, so that's great. it's only issue is that it can't draw textures either and i often need textures displayed just to make sure that the uvs are coming out ok, so i was wondering if there's another hidden nondestructive way to disable vertex colors?

I saw there's a transparency toggle in the viewport options, but sadly that doesn't work. if you turn it off, any verts with an alpha vertex color that's not 1 will stop drawing entirely so that can't be used.

thanks in advance!
-seneca

indigosm
I saw there's a transparency toggle in the viewport options

There's a checkbox labeled "Show Geometry Color" that can be used to toggle Cd attribute rendering in the viewport. It's right above "Transparency" toggle in Material section of Display Options. Alternatively, you can create a Cd visualizer and set it to a white constant color so it doesn't interfere with textures.

Regarding Alpha, I'm not sure how to prevent it from rendering, apart from temporarily removing or renaming it (which might be a better option than removal). If you want to avoid forgetting about restoring Alpha attribute, place a Rename SOP right before a node which you use to export your geometry. Or Copy/Transfer Attributes SOP, if you're deleting the attribute upstream.

According to documentation, Display Options → Material → Transparency merely toggles between Alpha blending and Cutouts. It does not disable Alpha rendering.

Docs
If the Transparency option is off, cutouts are used instead. Any pixel with a final alpha value of 0.0 will not be drawn, otherwise the pixel will be drawn as if it were opaque.

ajz3d
nt to avoid forgetting about restoring Alpha attribute, place a Rename SOP right before a node which you use to export your geometry.

According to documentation, Display Options → Material → Transparency merely toggles between Alpha blending and Cutouts. It does not disable Alpha rendering. Or Copy/Transfer Attributes SOP, if you're deleting the attribute upstream.

gotcha. good find. yeah i guess i'll have to feature request a way to disable transparency because it complicates stuff too much to dupe the vertex colors to a different channel and back. I often need to see/edit vertex colors mid script and it'd be pure misery having to move 'em back to the real values, then back to the fake values again and again and again thru the scripts...

indigosm

ajz3d
nt to avoid forgetting about restoring Alpha attribute, place a Rename SOP right before a node which you use to export your geometry.

According to documentation, Display Options → Material → Transparency merely toggles between Alpha blending and Cutouts. It does not disable Alpha rendering. Or Copy/Transfer Attributes SOP, if you're deleting the attribute upstream.

gotcha. good find. yeah i guess i'll have to feature request a way to disable transparency because it complicates stuff too much to dupe the vertex colors to a different channel and back. I often need to see/edit vertex colors mid script and it'd be pure misery having to move 'em back to the real values, then back to the fake values again and again and again thru the scripts...

I keep attributes that are packed into RGBA vertex colors as individual named attributes until the final export step where they are packed to Cd and Alpha. This way visualizers can be used for each channel, and I don't have to look up what they mean since it's right there in the name.

jsmack

indigosm

ajz3d
nt to avoid forgetting about restoring Alpha attribute, place a Rename SOP right before a node which you use to export your geometry.

According to documentation, Display Options → Material → Transparency merely toggles between Alpha blending and Cutouts. It does not disable Alpha rendering. Or Copy/Transfer Attributes SOP, if you're deleting the attribute upstream.

gotcha. good find. yeah i guess i'll have to feature request a way to disable transparency because it complicates stuff too much to dupe the vertex colors to a different channel and back. I often need to see/edit vertex colors mid script and it'd be pure misery having to move 'em back to the real values, then back to the fake values again and again and again thru the scripts...

I keep attributes that are packed into RGBA vertex colors as individual named attributes until the final export step where they are packed to Cd and Alpha. This way visualizers can be used for each channel, and I don't have to look up what they mean since it's right there in the name.

correct. the issue i have is i have tons of custom nodes that work with vertex colors and they'd all have to be rewritten for this. nooooooo..... hahaha.

indigosm

jsmack

indigosm

ajz3d
nt to avoid forgetting about restoring Alpha attribute, place a Rename SOP right before a node which you use to export your geometry.

According to documentation, Display Options → Material → Transparency merely toggles between Alpha blending and Cutouts. It does not disable Alpha rendering. Or Copy/Transfer Attributes SOP, if you're deleting the attribute upstream.

gotcha. good find. yeah i guess i'll have to feature request a way to disable transparency because it complicates stuff too much to dupe the vertex colors to a different channel and back. I often need to see/edit vertex colors mid script and it'd be pure misery having to move 'em back to the real values, then back to the fake values again and again and again thru the scripts...

I keep attributes that are packed into RGBA vertex colors as individual named attributes until the final export step where they are packed to Cd and Alpha. This way visualizers can be used for each channel, and I don't have to look up what they mean since it's right there in the name.

correct. the issue i have is i have tons of custom nodes that work with vertex colors and they'd all have to be rewritten for this. nooooooo..... hahaha.

sounds like a job for another custom node lol

jsmack

indigosm

jsmack

indigosm

ajz3d
nt to avoid forgetting about restoring Alpha attribute, place a Rename SOP right before a node which you use to export your geometry.

According to documentation, Display Options → Material → Transparency merely toggles between Alpha blending and Cutouts. It does not disable Alpha rendering. Or Copy/Transfer Attributes SOP, if you're deleting the attribute upstream.

gotcha. good find. yeah i guess i'll have to feature request a way to disable transparency because it complicates stuff too much to dupe the vertex colors to a different channel and back. I often need to see/edit vertex colors mid script and it'd be pure misery having to move 'em back to the real values, then back to the fake values again and again and again thru the scripts...

I keep attributes that are packed into RGBA vertex colors as individual named attributes until the final export step where they are packed to Cd and Alpha. This way visualizers can be used for each channel, and I don't have to look up what they mean since it's right there in the name.

correct. the issue i have is i have tons of custom nodes that work with vertex colors and they'd all have to be rewritten for this. nooooooo..... hahaha.

sounds like a job for another custom node lol

hahaah.