Has there been any update on this issue? I have the same problem when overlaying solar panels over racking.
I am having the same issues, does this mean stacking view ports in layout is no longer possible ? Isnāt that what the Nick Sonder method is based on ?
any word on a fix?
Anyone know when this will be corrected?
Just downloaded SketchUp 2018 and Iām very sorry to report that the fix apparently didnāt make it into this release. What the heck? This is kind of a major thing for anyone who uses Nick Sonder type workflows.
Hey Des, ā¦ we were hoping with the rework of rendering and MSAA it would have been fixed but unfortunately it has not. The team continues to find a solution.
Sorry for this inconvenience.
Trent
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Hi,
Any update on this being fixed ?
Did this make it into 2019? Wondering before I update.
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Hi,
Unless I am missing something, it is not possible in Layout to overlay two or more viewports of the same model and have them blend with transparency. Eg I have one scene showing contours, I have one scene showing roads, and I have one scene showing trees (each filled with a green transparent material).
Each is on a separate layer.
I would like to overlay the transparent trees over the contours and roads, with the roads and contours showing through. It still seems like this is impossible with layout ???
The reason i have three different scenes as I want to apply different lineweights/ styles to each type of information.
Is this possible ???
Yeah, thatās what this thread is about. Up to LayOut 2016 it worked and was beautiful and useful, and they broke it in 2017. They didnāt fix it in 2018, and I donāt see it on the release notes for 2019. I really donāt understand why this isnāt a higher priority than it apparently is.
Hey guys, again I am sorry this fix did not make it into 2019. However, I am hoping what did make it in 2019 will be of some help. We were able to get the Wireframe style to display correctly in LayOut therefore creating some transparency effects is possible.
In my SketchUp file I have a few scenes:
Site Plan (site context contours, sidewalk easement infoā¦ etcā¦) This is Wireframe Style
House (Section of the house)
Trees (plan view of the tree locations)
I bring this into LayOut and stacking the viewports
I create a Trees layer in LayOut then place a white rectangle over top of my SketchUp trees scene. I can control how much i want the trees to be faded back by controlling the opacity of the fill color.
I stack the Site Plan then the house scenes (on a Linework layer)
I vector all viewports except the Trees one which I set to Hybrid.
I know it will not work for all cases but it may work for majority until we can get this working again.
Here is what it looks like.
Trent
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Thatās just bad news, Trent. I donāt understand why this is not a priority.
Your example does look good, though. The trees do look transparent, but unless Iām mistaken, this is only possible with one faded layer, and that layer has to be at the bottom of the stack. IE you canāt put a ātransparentā tree over solid grass. Or, in my typical case, a transparent countertop over a solid cabinet and floor. I actually used to do transparent upper cabinets over transparent tops over solid lower cabinets and floor. Now I have to do the uppers and countertops in wireframe. Itās a lot of lines close together on the plan, so Iām experimenting with different colors. Iāll probably try the dashed lines now for one of them, but oh it was so clear and readable when transparency worked! No client or contractor was ever confused about what line was what.
By the way, what was it that got fixed about wireframe display? I guess I never noticed what was wrong.
Hi desā¦ believe me it has been a high priorityā¦ we just need to weigh the fix against the risk in other areas and unfortunately one we could not take. I have used your example many times to communicate the importance.
We essentially were hiding lines when we should not have with wireframe. See image below
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Personally my expectation is that any page layout system professional or not, will have layers and those layers have a working layer blending model, or at least utilise the transparency of the layer content itself. This is core functionality has been ignored for layer content that comes from Sketchup since LO 2016.
It is truly difficult to fathom why this is not a core functional priority for the development team ???
The need to resort to workarounds stifles creativity and flexibility, and leads to the need to utilise other software to achieve very standard image construction techniques.
Can we please have some part of the team look at this and maybe stand by your spiel with the new subscription / release model to add this as an incremental improvement instead of waiting until the next major release !
While I am at it, could we have a per layer blending mode (normal, add, multiply, etc)? I havent fully thought this through but if possible, this would be very useful and would be an alternative way of achieving my needs.
Thanks for all your other great work SU/LO team, I am mostly a big fan of Sketchup / Layout
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Hey, Trent. That might be the way to solve this problem. If the root cause here is changes to SketchUpās rendering engine, and those changes are not easily undone without breaking something else, then how about instead adding a transparency slider to the LayOut viewport objects? This would be the same transparency control that is available for other layout entities, such as the white rectangle you used to fade the trees. If I could do that to a viewport, Iād be golden!
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@jwhida and @des to both your points we are aware of the benefit this sort of feature request could provide.
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Just downloaded the newest releaseā¦ and ā¦ it seems there is still no progress in this area with the Sketchup 2019.2 release.
Fingers crossed for next time hey
@jwhida and @des ā¦ Please try againā¦ I love to be the bearer of good news and in this case it is true.
With existing LO files the viewports will need to be re-rendered to display the updated rendering.
This image is before a re-render
and this one is after displaying the transparent materials.
Enjoy!
Sorry I had intended on updating this post.
Trent
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OMG is this true? theres my number 1 reason to migrate to 19.2. good job
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Just downloaded and yes, layer transparency does appear to be fixed.Chill the champagne!
Thanks, Sketchup team!
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