material color alpha doesn't seem to work.

Questions & Answers
1

I'm doing a simple box-add, and the alpha in the color doesn't seem to work. Code:

var fieldBox : GameObject = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Cube);
fieldBox.transform.parent = this.transform;
fieldBox.transform.renderer.material.color = Color.blue;
fieldBox.transform.renderer.material.color.a = 0.05;

It just comes out solid blue. I'd expect something that was 95% transparent. What simple n00b mistake am I making?

Thanks!

2

You need to use a shader that has transparency. The default diffuse shader doesn't.

3

The immediate answer to the question that I asked is: the default shader does not do transparency. +1 to Eric5h5 for that.

However, the useful answer that I was looking for (and eventually found, but after a long-ish search!) was that I want to include this line:

fieldBox.renderer.material.shader = Shader.Find( "Transparent/Diffuse" );

In the code above. So the whole thing looks like this:

var fieldBox : GameObject = GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Cube);
fieldBox.transform.parent = this.transform;
fieldBox.transform.renderer.material.color = Color.blue;
fieldBox.transform.renderer.material.color.a = 0.05;
fieldBox.renderer.material.shader = Shader.Find( "Transparent/Diffuse" );

There are, of course, a variety of shaders and more efficient ways to get at them than Find(), but this is the answer for someone just looking to put a transparent cube on their early-on n00b project -- "how hard can it be?!"