Who is supporting transparency and/or textures now?

Developers
1

I’m implementing transparency export to IFC and thinking about textures.

However what applications can read transparency or textures now or are going to implement it?

Thanks

2

I think from what we set forth in the IFC4 certification, transparency IS expected to be universally supported, but textures were out of scope. I know GRAPHISOFT had been pushing for universal support for textures for some time, but it seemed low priority for almost everyone else. My reaction was to set up a Task Force/Working Group to figure it out and move things forward.

I think it would make for a good, formal, technical project for the vendors to cooperate on support, first examining if everything that is needed to properly and effectively do it is actually in the schema, and the best way of doing it. I’ve heard whispers that it is suboptimal, at this time. Then, I think there needs to be consensus by users on the best way to use it, through either an “add-on” to an existing MVD or a new MVD. If you want an international standard MVD, then the procedure is to create project around it.

I know @Moult has started topic threads to address this for the future:
IFC Textures and Colors: Current Situation - Developers - buildingSMART Forums
Textures and Colors: Criticisms and Issues - Developers - buildingSMART Forums

Further searching on this Forum includes:
IFC - Problem about Elements with Texture - Developers - buildingSMART Forums

1 Like
3

I apologise that I’ve been swamped and haven’t had time to revisit some of these bigger topics. Once 4.3 is out, I think that is a good milestone to resume discussion on the big topics like colours, photometric data, textures, lights, and the other gnarly ones that keep on cropping up on the forums.

In short I think transprency is already quite well supported, but texture support is very rare.

1 Like
4

For us on Import we have no current intention of supporting textures on import or export. Transparency and indeed colour are not currently supported, but we are discussing them. (Historically colours and transparency are used dynamically to reflect rules and functions, eg draw all pipes containing water with a nominal bore of greater than 200mm pale-blue, draw insulation 50% transparent). We do not have a slot in our data structures for “this door thinks it is pillar-box red”, or “this window is 80% transparent”

1 Like
5

Thanks for replies.
I have some more responses by email and confirm with Jeff that transparency is mostly implemented and I found nobody who is supporting textures.
Transparency is implemented but I do not think it was cross-tested and really used in real projects because see issues when try to use it.