[R] rgl.Sweave not producing transparency in pdf plots with alpha

[Alexander Shenkin]

On 5/2/2012 11:40 AM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> On 02/05/2012 12:26 PM, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
>> On 02/05/2012 11:00 AM, Alexander Shenkin wrote:
>> >  Hi Folks,
>> >
>> >  I'm trying to get rgl.Sweave to produce plots with transparency.
>> >  However, it just seems to produce opaque plots when pdf is the output
>> >  type.  Perhaps this is a known issue?  I'll just use .png in the
>> >  meantime, but wanted to see about this, as I didn't see it in the
>> >  documentation (though it's possible I missed it).
>> That uses the rgl.postscript() function, which uses the GL2PS library to
>> convert to PDF.  It may be that it doesn't support transparency in your
>> scene.  Or perhaps it just hasn't been turned on:  GL2PS didn't support
>> transparency when rgl.postscript was written.
> 
> I just took a look:  transparency is turned off, and when it's turned
> on, it doesn't look very good.
> 
> It's possible that there are tuning parameters that could make it look
> good, but I don't know what they are.
> 
> Duncan Murdoch

Thanks Duncan, I'll just stick with png for now then.

> 
>>
>> Duncan Murdoch
>>
>> >
>> >  Thanks,
>> >  Allie
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >  \documentclass{article}
>> >  \title {rgl test}
>> >  \usepackage{Sweave}
>> >  \begin {document}
>> >
>> >  This is a test of rgl.sweave's alpha capability.
>> >
>> >  \begin{figure}
>> >  % uncomment line below for png output (correct transparency)
>> >  %<<echo=FALSE, grdevice=rgl.Sweave, fig=TRUE, width=5, height=5,
>> >  resolution=100>>=
>> >  <<echo=FALSE, grdevice=rgl.Sweave, fig=TRUE, width=5, height=5,
>> >  resolution=100, outputtype=pdf, pdf=TRUE>>=
>> >  library(rgl)
>> >  data(volcano)
>> >  z<- 2 * volcano        # Exaggerate the relief
>> >  x<- 10 * (1:nrow(z))   # 10 meter spacing (S to N)
>> >  y<- 10 * (1:ncol(z))   # 10 meter spacing (E to W)
>> >  zlim<- range(y)
>> >  zlen<- zlim[2] - zlim[1] + 1
>> >  colorlut<- terrain.colors(zlen) # height color lookup table
>> >  col<- colorlut[ z-zlim[1]+1 ] # assign colors to heights for each
>> point
>> >  #open3d()
>> >  surface3d(x, y, z, color=col, back="lines", alpha=0.75)
>> >  @
>> >  \end{figure}
>> >
>> >  \end{document}
>> >
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>> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> >  and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>