How to render a UIView with transparent background on an SCNPlane in ARKit?

Question

My UIView has a UIColor.clear background. I am instantiating the View Controller from a storyboard.

When I set SCNPlane geometry's diffuse contents to the viewcontroller's view, the Transparent background appears solid white on the plane. here is how I set it

let material = SCNMaterial()
material.diffuse.contents = viewController.view
planeGeometry.materials = [material]

I can see the view, just the background is not transparent.

I saw suggestion on other Stack overflow posts where they suggested to try this

material.diffuse.contents = viewController.view.layer

This works and the the plane renders the transparencies, but then the view is not interactive anymore.

Is there a way that I can retain the interactivity and the transparency when the view is rendered on the plane?

Answer 1

Try setting your view's isOpaque property to false:

let material = SCNMaterial()
viewController.view.isOpaque = false
material.diffuse.contents = viewController.view
planeGeometry.materials = [material]