Occluding

[bjackson1]

how does Occluding work?

When I turn it on, it just makes the model invisible but blocking models behind it.  Is this how it is supposed to work?  My hope would be that if a real world object moves in front of the model, it occludes it from view.

[RyanOrwoll · Accepted solution]

Hi Brent,

Occluding is used to indicate that you physically have that model or model item and you are choosing not to render (augment) it in the HoloLens.   This is very important so that based and the line of site of the user, anything that would be behind the physical object isn't rendered as well.   Since when that particular object or part is physically there in front of the user, you're telling the Experience to not "draw" it or anything behind it.  

Ryan

[bjackson1]

Ahh, that makes sense and is a cool feature now that I know how it works.

Thank you for clearing that up!

[AdamFagan]

I agree occlusion is necessary but the transparency of the model gives me the illusion that nothing is behind what I currently see even though I know it exists.  Can the transparency be modified/controlled?

[RyanOrwoll]

From that camera angle, or point of view, since the physical object is in the way of your sightline, you wouldn't be able to see what is behind it since it is a physical object.   That is why it is shown that way using occluding.   However, you can use the Opacity (1 Opaque - 0 Transparent) attribute to do some cool things with a model/model item as well.   It just depends on what you ultimately want to display to the user.

[AdamFagan]

That's exactly what I was looking for, thanks Ryan. 

[jmikesell]

It seems that there would be a really good use case for setting the opacity of occlusion. As mentioned you can use uncheck occlusion and just reduce opacity of a model to get an "x-ray" type of view. But then this lets the color of the "occluding" model bleed on to the underlying models and it also blocks what the camera sees.

In my mind the ideal end result would be that the occluding model only occludes the 3D data but it is also has adjustable opacity so you can see thru it.