Does it possible to have 50 % (or more) transparency for an object as soon as this object is locked?
And possibility to enable/disable collision between locked objects and active objects?
(suggestion by Steph3D)

Hi Pilou,

> Does it possible to have 50 % (or more) transparency
> for an object as soon as this object is locked?

Not currently - transparency is generally a much different kind of thing than applying a color since transparency requires the polygons to be processed in a particular order.

So that will be a different task to work on in the future, it is not really related to the colorizing or lighting engine work that I recently did.


> And possibility to enable/disable collision between locked
> objects and active objects?

Collision detection would usually be something included in a physics simulation type program, not really in a modeling program. That's again something that would be a much different task to implement than what is currently in MoI. Maybe it will be possible in the future at some point, but not for quite some time.


You can control whether snapping is active on locked objects or not, there is a setting for that under Options > Snaps > Object snap options > Snap to locked objects checkbox.


- Michael

Thanks for the infos!

About the transparency : if you display the object one frame by two at more 20 ps by second
you will obtain for the eye 50% of transparency without touch the render!

About the collision it's not "physic engine"
just have possibility to modify a cube inside a sphere locked ;)
Seems yet possible?

Hi Pilou,

> About the transparency : if you display the object one
> frame by two at more 20 ps by second
> you will obtain for the eye 50% of transparency
> without touch the render!

That would tend to make more of a flickering appearance rather than a really proper transparent looking one.

The other problem with that would be a requirement to be constantly re-rendering the entire scene at all moments even if nothing had changed, that would cause things like MoI to consume a lot of CPU time even when it was just sitting there.

Currently MoI only redraws the scene when something has changed and the display needs to be updated to reflect the change. If you just sit there and do nothing, the display does not need to be redrawn which is good because it does not take up any CPU/GPU resources right then.


> About the collision it's not "physic engine"
> just have possibility to modify a cube inside a sphere locked ;)

Instead of locking, it is better to instead use hiding for a sphere that is getting in the way.

If you hide the sphere that is getting in the way then you can much more easily work on modifying the cube inside of it.


> Seems yet possible?

Yes, there are other ways to select the "inside cube" - you can do a window select, "select all", or use the scene browser for example.

But really the best way is to hide things that are getting in your way, rather than locking for that case.

If you need to hide and show the same object repeatedly, it is a good idea to give it a name, then you can use the scene browser to target it easily with one click in the "Objects" section.


At some point in the future I may be able add something like making locking have a transparency effect, but like I mentioned it will take some time before there is a proper working transparency mechanism.


- Michael

Yes transparency locked object seems the best when you want to see the internal object in the same time for modify it without modify the visible sphere by error ;)
Or simply for draw a new object inside the locked sphere à the good place!

No cursor of transparency for the normal Edit color Object?

Hi Pilou,

> Yes transparency locked object seems the best when you want
> to see the internal object in the same time for modify it without
> modify the visible sphere by error ;)

Yes, transparency for locked objects would be good for that particular situation.

But until then you can get the equivalent of 100% transparency just by hiding the object that is on the outside and in the way.

That will let you get this job done currently.


> Or simply for draw a new object inside the locked sphere
> à the good place!

Actually though for other drawing tasks having locked objects be transparent and also automatically not targeted by the mouse at all could be bad, for example what if you wanted to draw the new sphere snapped on to some particular point of the box?

If the box was transparent and also totally ignored for all kinds of mouse interaction, it would then not make it possible to use as a reference guide object which is currently one of the main goals for locked objects.

So even in the future when there is transparency available, there will still probably be a second setting for "snap to locked objects", which you would also enable or disable separately, so that you can use the objects as a snapping guide.


> No cursor of transparency for the normal Edit color Object?

Sorry I'm not sure if I understand this question.

Do you mean being able to make an object transparent by editing properties of its style? I would also like to make that possible in the future, but that won't happen for v2 because like I mentioned it will take some additional work to make transparency possible.

- Michael

< Do you mean being able to make an object transparent by editing properties of its style?
yes :)