Hi,
I have a scene where I need to have some objects rendered semi-transparent (say, the four machines with red parts from the screenshot) . How do I do that? Do I need to duplicate all the used materials and make them transparent in Nodes? Or is there an easier way?
Thanks!
Just move the transmission slider up in the principled bsdf node until its transparent enough for you. Also move the roughness slider for a clearer material.
So that means doing duplicating all used materials and do it one by one separately, if I understand correctly. Thanks.
If they share the same material, changing one will change them all.
Yes but they’re used also in objects that need to stay opaque. Oh well 
You have to make a material for every alteration. F.e. red plastic is one transparent red plastic is one, etc.
Actually, you don’t have to duplicate any materials. In blender you can keyframe almost any property (even the renderability toggles). When you right click most value inputs you are given the option to keyframe that property:
It looks like you are using eevee, so set the blend mode setting on the material to alpha blend first or transparency won’t work.
If you need the material to “jump” to the semi-transparent state for an animation or something then you’ll need to open the graph editor and set the interpolation type to “constant” (press T to get the interpolation options):
Since this method works for most inputs, it can be used to animate the “fac” attribute of mix shaders allowing you to blend between two different materials if you want:
Here’s the blend file I used to make these examples if you want to inspect it:
http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=52224
Thank you very much! I love blender
