Vertex color alpha visualization


I have a question for devs. As blender 2.8 now finally support Alpha in vertex color layers, there seems to be a lack of it’s visualization.
Is there a way to visualize painting of alpha channel or no?

No. Work was done for painting. But it was not achieved for rendering.
GSOC was done on a master branch that had a 2.79 interface. In 2.7 branch, you can paint vertex color alpha and see mesh transparency.
But as in 2.8, you can’t render it.

There is no Separate RGBA node for EEVEE or Cycles.
There is no specific attribute for vertex color channel alpha.

That is not the only vertex color feature that is missing in 2.8.
There is no way to bake diffuse colors or basic shadowing to vertex color, too.

So for now it’s best to just ignore the fact that blender has RGBA vertex color and work with second set parsed as alpha.

But are there any plans to improve that, or should I go to and file feature request?

@brecht or @Hypersomniac or @ideasman42 should have a basic idea about how to handle that for the render engines.
If you have a clear idea of how it should work and are ready to provide mockups and in detail explanations about what you expect, you can go to rightclickselect.
If you just wanted to make a reminder of current unsastisfying situation ; I think this thread is sufficient.