I need a material to be transparent in the viewport.

I’m doing the Joan of Arc tutorial from years ago, just need the blue material I have created to be transparent so I can see through to the reference images I have on front and side planes. This is how I would do modeling in 3ds Max years ago in 2005.

I am using Blender 2.62 on Mac 10.6 and have been messing with Z-transparency within Material and the transparency check box within Object, no luck. I know how to model just need to find the buttons inside Blender. Thanks.

Did you set a value lower than 1 for the Alpha slider in the material?

With a lower alpha value and Transparency in Object properties checked, it should work. ‘Transparency’ in the material doesn’t even need to be checked

The Z key toggles wireframe rendering on and off. Try pressing it in edit mode. Is that what you’re looking for?

you can just try H as shortcut for the command “hide”, ALT+H to undo.

Whups, transparency is not translucency. I need the mesh to be translucent so I can see the mesh and what is in the background.

I learned to model like this years ago from watching the 3D Buzz Alien Head tutorial.

Alien Head
Video: 03 - Roughing In
Time: 4:40-6:57, a little over 2 minutes.
http://www.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/sv_showvideo.php?v=3667 Free login required.

Z and H/Alt+H worked well if I wanted the mesh visually out of the way entirely.

I think this thread got moderated (had a link in it, whups) and took some time to get posted so everyone who replied did not read my post on the 2nd of March.

Does anyone want to take a crack at this translucency issue? Thanks.

Free login required

Not very inviting.

But if you follow my early post should be enough. Just set a value in between 0 & 1 for Alpha.