Alpha Blending & Depth Sort

Hi there…

I have two questions concerning alpha blending:

  1. Do I HAVE to use a depth sort (at least for transparent objects)???

  2. What blending function values should I use (what is used most commonly for game engines)?

Thx,
Drag0n

hi!

  1. I’d say you have to. Not sure but I guess most of the games do more or less something like:
  • draw opaque meshes first
  • sort translucent meshes
  • disable depth mask (don’t write but test z-buffer)
  • draw translucent faces (sorted)
  1. There’s no answer for that question because there’s no one most common blending mode in games It all depends on what effect you want to achieve…
    Best you can do is to test different blending modes with different alpha values on your own seeing their results…

Hope it helps a bit.

[This message has been edited by MickeyMouse (edited 10-21-2002).]