Material set up using Principled BSDF Alpha input – the Alpha output of an Image Texture node is connected to Alpha input of Principled BSDF (image must carry an alpha channel). In the absence of an alpha channel being available it is possible to use the Color output node but in doing this the resulting effect may be incorrect as it is then defined by the colours and not a channel.

Caution should be exercised doing this however, as it may lead to transparency being incorrectly defined. Doing this forces transparency to be defined by image colour, which is essentially desaturated to achieve the greyscale tones necessary for masking. In Settings select Alpha Blend (gradient), Alpha Clip (clip mask) or Alpha Hashed.įor transparency to be rendered in Eevee, in Material Properties, under Settings, the Blend Mode needs to be set.ĭesign note: absent an alpha channelled image being associated with the material it is possible to use the Image Textures Color output by connecting this directly to the Alpha input instead similar to using an Opacity Mask (see below). Important: all Eevee based material transparency requires a Blend Mode to be set in Material Properties.

For this to work images mapped to the linked Image Texture node should include an Alpha Channel. The simplest transparent material setup is to use Principled BSDF Alpha, the Alpha output from an Image Texture node to the the Alpha input of the primary Principled BSDF node with the materials Blend Mode set to Alpha Blend, Alpha Clip or Alpha Hashed. With this in mind the following is an overview of the different ways to create transparency for both Eevee and Cycles render engines in Blender 3.x+. While there are some minor updates to the interface, for Blender 3.x how transparent materials are set up and rendered hasn’t changed over previous versions.

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