Display Bug: Nested blocks transparency textures

Hello,

We have been having this problem for a while but now I finally took time to document, prepare sample files and do some more testing. This is a bit obscure but annoying display issue with nested blocks that use transparency map and custom per-object display mode.

Setup: Main display mode is Rendered (modified to show edges of surfaces and meshes), it could also be shaded or any regular non-wireframe mode.
The mode assigned to objects with transparency map per-object is a copy of Rendered, but with no edges (common for entourage display with Alpha map like trees, people etc.).

All works fine for regular objects or non-nested block objects. As soon as the blocks become nested, the transparency display goes out of whack. The condition for this problem to occur is that the original blocks or the non-block geometry has to be not visible, otherwise it works fine.
Note how the “evergreen” block made of 2 simple planes with transparency pretty much disappears if nested, because if this problem.

Here is a sample of how it looks:

Here is a test file shown in the video (textures saved in the file)
nestedblocktransparency_sample.3dm (2.6 MB)

Display modes used and SysInfo file:
Rendered.ini (12.5 KB) RenderNOEDGES.ini (11.4 KB) SysInfo.txt (2.7 KB)

@jeff - tagging you here as the main Display dev but it may as well be someone else that needs to look at it. Oh, I and tested both in latest V6 and WIP - same problem shows.

thanks,

–jarek

Hi jarek - checking it…
@Jarek - here I guess I see similar but only if the layers BASE and NONBLOCKS are both off - just one off and it looks OK as far as I can see. Anyway, I see it is wrong.

So far this behaves correctly in V7.

-Pascal

Hi @Pascal,

  1. that is correct - display is OK when the non-nested blocks or just plain objects are visible; it only gets messy when they are both off (which is typically the case - we don’t plan to keep other stuff on just so the nested blocks display properly)

  2. V7 is the same problem. Can you confirm that you imported the RenderedNOEDGES mode into V7 when trying it? Otherwise it may work and look fine if the rendered mode has no mesh wires shown. The main problem is it happens in MIXED display modes when main view rendered mode has surf. and mesh edges visible, but we want specific object like foliage transparency to use the same exact mode but no edges visible. Hope that makes sense.

thanks,

–jarek

Ah, yes, sorry - I may not have brought the display mode in in V7 - I’ll check.

@Jarek - RH-58529 Transparency glitches’

-Pascal

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Yes, please try turning ON mesh edges in the Rendered mode in V7 and bring the RenderedNOEDGES mode - that’s the common combo we use and it should show the problem in the sample files…