Not seeing background in Shader workspace

I’m going through Grant’s new 3.2 material in the Complete Blender Course. In video 9, where he introduces reflective materials, he talked about the blurry background image in the Shading workspace, Material Preview mode, an image which reflects crisply in metallic materials. My screen looked very much like his: I could see blurry images of the trees in the background.

But now I don’t see that background, or else it’s become very, very blurry. When I rotate the image, the light seems to change, so I think it’s there. (It’s still on the first of the spheres in the lower right corner.)

I’ve looked at the dropdown to the right of the view modes and tried the options there. Everything I find on the internet refers to Blender 2.8. It seems there used to be a blur option in that dropdown in 2.8, but it’s not there in 3.2

Can any body help?

Here’s Grant’s view with blurry but discernible patches of trees and sky and ground:

Here’s mine, which is basically just gray:

By the way, I LOVE the course and had a great time making the barrel, crate, and pillars.

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Check the Shading dropdown to the right of the viewport sphere icons.

In there is an ‘Opacity’ slider it should be at 1, full on.

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It could be that the “World Opacity” is 0.

Set it to 1

Hope this helps. :+1:

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Thanks, @NP5 and @3DE_Study. But World Opacity is not an option on mine.

I may have the wrong version. I still don’t know what I did to change this. but I’ll make sure I have the latest version and then see if I have World Opacity in that dropdown.

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It can be a little bug?
Latest version, old bugs solve, new bugs introduced.
But, for following the course it’s not a big stopper.
It’s only handy for very reflective materials. Not so for wood and stone.

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You crop images so we do not get to see the versions etc. But updating may well be a solution.

I would try a new file see if it is ok in that. If so append in the objects to it. The odds are it is something accidentally pressed that changed the set up. Just so rare it is hard to fathom out.

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In the first image, I see 3.2.0. But yes, it’s better to use the main menu > window > save screenshot.

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So it is! Well noticed. Even more odd as I have 3.2.1 and world opacity is there.

@NP5 and @FedPete, thanks again for your help with this problem. I am working in Blender on a Linux computer, and Linux is new to me. It appears that while 3.2 is out for Linux, 2.8 is the latest that works completely right in my system. So I assumed I had 3.2 when my computer said Blender was up to date, but it actually only had 2.8. So that’s why my menus didn’t look like yours. I still don’t know what I did to lose the image in the background on Material Preview Mode, but as long as it’s there reflecting in the material, it doesn’t really change the result. What really matters is being able to see the HDRI’s in Render Mode, and I don’t have any problem with that.

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Hi Ken, I’m using Blender on Linux Ubuntu.
Which updated Blender to its latest version. 3.2.2 currently.
No problems at all!

But if I remember correctly Blender had a significant update since 3.x.x? Not sure when. But it doesn’t support older hard software (I remember now, Win7 is not supported anymore).

  • Do you have the latest Linux?
  • Blender uses Python 3 and up. Maybe that’s the problem too.
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Blender uses relative paths in the project .blend file. It finds images, relative where you .blend is located. If you move the .blend file to a different locations (new project structure or so) then you lose the images (paths are changed).

  • In that case you must locate the image path property again in your blender project, and reconnect the image.
  • You can also instruct Blender to keep a copy of the selected image in the .blend file itself. But that can make your .blend file very big to handle.
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