I’m guessing I’m doing something silly here…
What I want to do is take my lamp plane and make it display as X-Ray so when I am modeling it doesn’t get in the way of my view (yes, it’s on a different layer, but sometimes I want to keep that layer on). So I figured, easiest way is just go to the properties and check ‘X-Ray’. This doesn’t seem to have any effect on it (I’m running v2.78). Wire and Transparency doesn’t seem to have any effect either. All the other settings I can see an immediate effect when I check them. My work around was to change the Maximum Draw Type to Wire…that just makes the object wire, so that works for me, but the other settings such as X-Ray don’t seem to be working as I expect. When I researched, someone had the issue of ‘pinning’ the menu at the top, but I tried that and it doesn’t make a difference.
You’re misunderstanding what is meant by ‘X-Ray’. Enabling X-Ray means that you will always be able to see that object, even if another is in front of it. So, if you really want to try out X-Ray feature, enable it on a few other objects in your scene and disable it on your light plane. You’ll be able to see those objects through the plane, even if they’re behind it.
If you want to always see through the plane in normal viewport, enable wire drawtype like you have. If you’re trying to preview in render view, and the plane is getting in the way, use this node setup:
Ah, thanks for the help! I thought perhaps it was something like that. An easier way than the node setup, though, is to uncheck the Camera in the Cycles settings, Ray visibility. That will keep an object from rendering or being seen in render view.
Here is a screenshot. It is in Object Properties under the Cycles Settings. What I normally use this for is to put on my lamp objects so the actual lamp doesn’t show up in the final render or rendered viewport view. The lighting effects of the lamp still show up of course.
