HighlightLayer with alphaBlendingMode = BABYLON.Engine.ALPHA_ADD

[williamqin]

HighlightLayer works with the default alpha combine blending mode, but it disappears when I set the blend mode to "add." I tried setting the neutralColor to Color4(0, 0, 0, 1), but it still doesn't work. How do I fix this?

[Wingnut]

Hi W, welcome to the forum.

http://doc.babylonjs.com/how_to/highlight_layer

At bottom of document... some talk of blending modes.

Both highlightLayer and glowLayer have shown to be irritable with transparencies/alpha, out of design necessity.

Here is the thread that introduced the highlight layer...

http://www.html5gamedevs.com/topic/25503-babylon-highlight-layer/

I think, in its newer posts... there were some other complaints about using it in-conjunction-with transparencies.  It has some limitations.

IF, by chance, you are using a mesh glow/highlight to indicate when something has been mouse-selected... then there are some other ways.

1.  Turn on mesh.showBoundingBox = true when mesh is selected
2.  Animate/Color-cycle the mesh.material.diffuseColor
3.  Add/increase/color-cycle the material.emissiveColor to brighten selected mesh
4.  Shine a bright spotlight on a selected mesh
5.  Sine/cosine-animate the selected mesh.scaling... to make it "throb", size-wise

Just some ideas.  Possibly, @Sebavan (and others) might want to say a few words (which will be much more-informed about this subject than my words).  Stay tuned for better answers.

But, I KNOW I have seen more than one "highlightLayer is not designed for transparencies/alpha blends" comments from Sebavan... around the forum.  You might want to do a thorough forum search for more info.  Party on.

[Sebavan]

This is linked to the default resolution of the texture, you could tweak the setup like this:

https://www.babylonjs-playground.com/#1KUJ0A#140