alpha in color POP, is it normal ? and few more questions

[nmn]

Hi everyone

i have a few questions about the color POP.

is it normal that the alpha in the color pop doesn't show in the viewport, and doesn't influence the render of the particles, except when in sprites display mode ?

because after doing many experiments i wasn't able to get it to work.

besisdes one other thing i noticed, is that is i'm using points as particles display, and if i have my particles in the middle of the grid, so when they emit it's behind them, if i use alpha the grid behind the particles will be seen, while, while only using color wihout alpha is doesn't appear there.

so if the answer was "yes normal" , isn't it possible to render particles in houdini with varying alpha ?

because in maya it is possible to do in viewport as well as rendering (hardware or software it depends) for any particles type.

thanks in advance for your answers.

is it possible to see the full shaders in the viewport? what i mean by that is , if for example i attach a checkerboard material or a constant material with a texture to a grid, can i see it directly in the viewport?

because by default i can only see a gray material with some white specs on it, even though if i switch to shader view or i region render i can see the checkerboard or the texture i'm using.

and why when i try to use the enable xray for selected objects it doesn't work ? does it need a special treatment or smtg ?

Regards

Edited February 8, 2009 by nmn