Addding a Highlight to a Transparent Part: 2 Methods

Introduction

Highlight is a great tool to use for your games, as it is customizable and looks great on parts (Unlike Selection Boxes). However, things can become annoying when you want to say, highlight a transparent part. Roblox doesn’t support it, but there are ways you can add a highlight to a part that is transparent!

In this tutorial, I will show you two methods to add a highlight to a transparent part, with their pros and cons! Let’s get started!

NOTE: Only one of these methods was found by me (Method #2). Method #1 is credited to their proper user.

Method #1: Humanoid

@BuilderBird_Dev - How can I use highlights on transparent objects? - #9 by BuilderBird_Dev

This method came from BuilderBird_Dev0, and they have a great way to add a highlight to a transparent* part!

Here’s the steps:

  1. Group the transparent* part(s) that you want to add a highlight to as a model.
    image
    image

  2. Add a Humanoid into the model.
    image

Why a humanoid?

(From the OP)

  1. Create a Highlight, put it somewhere but the Workspace and set it’s Adornee to the part or model, then put it inside the model.
    image
Why this order?

@zbav created a post/tutorial on this, I suppose you check it out. It explains the steps you should take when adding a highlight to your parts.

*NOTE: The part can’t be fully transparent, only up to 0.99 transparency.

Pros:

  • Acts/Behaves like a normal highlight
  • Easily customizable
  • Doesn’t use a hacky method

Cons:

  • Has to be a model and humanoid, not a single part
  • Can’t be fully transparent (although very translucent already, so this isn’t really a problem)

Method #2: Negative Infinity Reflectance

@powering_puns (Me) - This tutorial!

This is the method that I found out when I was playing around with highlights and transparent parts!

Here’s the steps:

  1. Change the Material of your part to Glass and your Reflectance of your transparent part to -inf.
    imageimage
How do I set the Reflectance to -Infinity?

First, type in the - button, then hold the 9 key until you see your part not shiny anymore.

Why do I need to?

Setting your part to the material Glass bypasses the rule that a Highlight can’t be in a transparent part. (I’m not sure if this intentional or unintentional.)

Setting the transparency to -infinity makes the glass fully transparent, because the glass material is shiny by default, even when transparent. The only way to make it not shiny is by setting the reflectance to -infinity.

  1. Create a Highlight, put it somewhere but the Workspace and set it’s Adornee to the part or model, then put it inside the model.
    image

Pros:

  • Acts/Behaves like a normal highlight
  • Easily customizable
  • Can be a single part
  • Can be fully transparent

Cons:

  • Uses a hacky method (Not sure if highlight working with glass is intentional or not)

Summary

Those were the two methods to use if you ever need to add a highlight to a transparent part! I hope you found this article useful, especially if you need it for a game or feature you are making!

If you have any questions, I will try to answer them!


This was the first ever community tutorial I have ever made, so please give me feedback!

Additional Notes
  • Was going to include @Varonex_0’s tutorial, but I tried it and it no longer works. (or maybe I did something wrong?)
  • If you’re going to actually use this tutorial for something important, use the first method. My method is pretty hacky and Roblox might patch it.
  • If you have any of your own methods, tell me and I will include them!
Credits
19 Likes

thank you so so much for this guide actually, i used to do a different method where you would just have a single, tiny non-transparent part in the highlight and it would highlight any parts that didn’t have transparency one, but roblox patched that one long ago. the humanoid method is perfect for what i need to do!!

1 Like

Cool! what a nice new way to put highlights on transparency part!
and thank you for introducing my idea.

1 Like