Transparency and light in the 3D view

Support Compositing and Post Processing
1

Hello,
I started using Blender about a month ago. I am planning a (real) car restoration in about a year and thought I would model my car in Blender and model the changes I want to make so I could see how it would look ahead of time. I have gone from not even knowing how to make an object or rotating/moving it, to almost completing the BASIC shell shape of the car. (No effects, or anything, it looks like a plastic toy right now.) But the question I have is: I want to work mainly in Object/Edit mode so I can rotate the car around at will and see any side I want (when Im done modeling), whenever, but I want to be able to see transparency/light while Im moving around. Is it possible to model transparency/translucency and light and see it in the 3D view? I want to render also, that shows the most detail, I know, but would like to see it in 3D and still move it around. Sorry I’m long winded, just wanted to give the background of my question. Thank you.

BTW: the transparency shows up in the renders, but not the viewports.

2

I think your best bet is going to be taking multiple renders, and just switching between them in a slide show, or rendering a video. If you render a video with the camera orbiting the car, you can pause it from any angle you like.

Otherwise, your just going to have to set up the angle you want and render it. As far as i know that is going to be the only way.

3

Hmm…that sucks, I was hoping to have full control of my view, with all the effects, etc. But I thank you for the reply.

4

You won’t see all the full effects in the 3d view, that’s what the render is for. A render can take seconds or minutes to compute, just think how mind numbingly tedious it would be to have that in the 3d view.
You can show transparency. Select the object whiich has a transparent material and in the object settings in the Draw panel select Draw Extra / Transp (blender 2.49)

To show lighting effects more like the render go to the Game menu at the top of blender and select Blender GLSL Materials. Select Textures view mode for the 3d view and if you have a compatible graphics card you will see the proper lighting effects from your lamps. Use buffer shadows (spot lamps) rather than ray shadows for the best in view effect.

5

Alright, I will try that. I know the render is for showing the final result, I just thought it would be easier to see the modifications to the real car that I want to make if I could move the model around on the fly.