Layer opacity

[cobrien]

Hello,

Is there a way to adjust the opacity of a whole layer?
I have an object made up of a dozen or so materials & I'm wanting to make it semi transparent when rendering with v-ray. Rather than adjust each material individually I'm hoping to just adjust the whole layer. Possible?

FZ 9.2.4
V-Ray 3.6.8

 

Thanks.

Edited July 26, 2023 by cobrien
more info needed

[jldaureil]

override material : LAYER attributes > semi transparent matérial picked from materials

hope this helps

 

[Justin Montoya]

Yep,  Use Material Override and pick your Ghost material you already made...

[cobrien]

Thanks for getting back to me.
I was wanting to give all the materials in a layer (a dozen or so in this case) a transparency rather than making everything the same colour. As it was only for a couple of views I was hoping I could just give the whole layer a transparency % rather than adjusting each material individually.
I ended up doing each individually.

[Justin Montoya]

Depending on how frequently you need show this, I might consider setting up another layer with duplicate geometry and the other transparency materials assigned.  That way you can turn them on and off as needed.  You should also be able to do this with Scenes, but I find them a tad too complicated for much of my work, personally. 

[ZTEK]

For cases like yours, something temporary for producing some images, my strategy is to edit and manage the materials rather than duplicate objects and layers. formZ's dual system with objects and layers is powerful, as well as scenes. Especially when projects grow in complexity, and developing options also is needed. Although, it's way more involved than dealing with the materials and libraries palettes for cases like this.

In simple, what I do is the following:

• Make two copies of each material.
• Edit one of the copies and leave the other as is for later.
• Delete and replace one by one the original materials with their corresponding edited copies (transparency).
• Generate the renders.
• When the images are ready, delete the materials you have edited and replace them with the second copies of the originals. Optionally, duplicate them before deleting and replacing them in case other images are needed later.

[dpwr]

On 8/10/2023 at 6:11 PM, ZTEK said:

For cases like yours, something temporary for producing some images, my strategy is to edit and manage the materials rather than duplicate objects and layers. formZ's dual system with objects and layers is powerful, as well as scenes. Especially when projects grow in complexity, and developing options also is needed. Although, it's way more involved than dealing with the materials and libraries palettes for cases like this.

In simple, what I do is the following:

• Make two copies of each material.
• Edit one of the copies and leave the other as is for later.
• Delete and replace one by one the original materials with their corresponding edited copies (transparency).
• Generate the renders.
• When the images are ready, delete the materials you have edited and replace them with the second copies of the originals. Optionally, duplicate them before deleting and replacing them in case other images are needed later.

My cheat on this is to copy all the objects with materials and paste them into a new project. I adjust the materials there, and sometimes rename the layers. Example, "LED wall one" becomes "LED wall two". I then copy and paste back into the original project, and I have an additional set of layers with an alternate visual look. This is good for then setting scenes as well, turning layers on and off for different views.