I’ve been trying to figure out how to make a hatch transparent but have been unsuccessful. HOWEVER… I opened up my file today in wireframe mode, and one of my hatches magically had a transparency applied to it. I have no idea when I implicitly applied this change. I’m trying to compare the properties of the opaque ones to the transparent one, but can’t seem to distinguish any differences.
Ultimately my goal is to be able to have full control over transparencies in Rhino, without bringing my linework into illustrator. Thanks!
hmm- looks like the image has transparency, maybe, is in front of the hatches and the hatches are at the back of the curves as well (either in 3d or via SendToBack) so the curves draw in front…
oh you’re right - the aerial had a transparency and the hatch sat behind it. whoops.
so rhino doesn’t have the ability to change the transparency of hatches yet?
Instead of making hatches, you can make surfaces. Then select the surface(s) and in Properties set material to by object, pick a color for the “hatch”, and set the transparency slider up to where you want it. Finally, with the Top view active and the surfaces still selected, use _SetObjectDisplayMode and set the surfaces to Rendered mode. They will now have transparency in the Top viewport no matter what display mode the viewport is in. You can select the surfaces and re-adjust the transparency to your needs.
In my opinion that this is an applicable workaround in the long run – for me at least, it isn’t.
Transparency for solid fills and for the background colour for patterned hatches (which is also nonexistent at the moment) are very much in need!
In case you haven’t found this by now - you can change the transparency for a solid hatch either by changing the layer color, or by changing the hatch’s color after it has been created.
-wim
Once the solid hatch has been created, select it in the viewport.
In the Properties panel, switch to the Object tab.
By default, the Display Color is set to By Layer. In the pull-down, change that to “Other”.
At that point, the Select Color dialog pops up and you can change the transparency with the slider in that dialog.
-wim
Can I change transparency for the background of a patterned hatch? For example, if I have a grid hatch and want to mask everything under it, but keep the lines of the grid at 100% opacity.
Hi John! Being able to add transparency to hatches is a function which would be really useful. At the moment it’s one of the main reasons why I have to move architecture drawings into illustrator or photoshop, but I would love to be able to keep everything in Rhino! Developing this for the next version would be really useful.
